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A health watchdog is examining whether patients living near the Victorian-NSW border have been harmed, with leaked emails revealing the closest ambulance is not always being dispatched.
The emails from Ambulance Victoria show that in 43 towns along the border, the closest ambulance is not always sent, due to triple-zero calls being directed to the wrong state.
For residents of towns along the Victoria-NSW border, the closest ambulance is not always dispatched to emergencies.Credit: Wayne Taylor
“This is a huge risk to patient safety,” an Ambulance Victoria duty manager wrote in an email last November.
Another email from an Ambulance Victoria patient review specialist said there had been 10 patient safety incidents over the past two years involving emergency calls from border towns being handled by both NSW and Victorian call centres.
But following questions from The Age, Ambulance Victoria and NSW Ambulance said it hoped to resolve the issue within days.
Victorian Ambulance Union secretary Danny Hill said four Victorian patients had died from cardiac arrests in the past year following delays in dispatching the closest ambulances. He said these delays were caused by the misrouting of triple-zero calls.
“We believe there’s been delays to a large number of patients in border communities,” he said.
Hill said union members had lobbied for the glitches to be resolved for more than a year.
“We try to route the cases to the nearest ambulance service because that gives the patient the best chances of survival,” Hill said. “When those things are not happening it can increase the chances of a negative outcome.”
Under longstanding arrangements, Ambulance Victoria responds to emergencies in 38 NSW towns – including Moama, Murray Downs and Barooga – that do not have their own ambulance services nearby.
Similarly, NSW Ambulance assists five Victorian towns – including Carlyle, Gooramadda, Rutherglen and Wahgunyah – that have poor access to state ambulance services.
But Hill said over the past year, hundreds of emergency calls had been handled by both Victorian and NSW call centres due to Telstra failing to initially direct them to the correct state.
He said that in March, a 61-year-old woman died in Rutherglen from a cardiac arrest after waiting 12 minutes for the nearest ambulance to be dispatched. This delay was due to the call being handled by a Victorian emergency call centre, then a NSW call centre.
Ambulance Victoria has investigated the Rutherglen incident and concluded there was no impact on the patient’s clinical outcome.
A Safer Care Victoria spokeswoman said the watchdog would examine the union’s concerns about patient safety.
“We have met with the Victorian Ambulance Union to discuss their concerns and are aware that a resolution is imminent,” she said.
An Ambulance Victoria spokeswoman said it was aware of the concerns regarding call routing and dispatch on the NSW border and a resolution would be implemented in the coming days.
“Calls will be routed to the closest ambulance service instead of the state where the patient is located, providing an enhanced response to people living on the border,” he said.
A spokesperson for NSW Ambulance said it was working with Ambulance Victoria to implement an updated call-routing plan that will immediately direct triple-zero calls in the border region to the nearest ambulance.
Telstra directed questions to the state emergency services providers, insisting it had made no system changes to its processes.
“Our triple-zero team directs emergency calls according to processes set and agreed by state emergency services,” a Telstra spokesman said.
An Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority spokeswoman said people phoning triple-zero always spoke to a Telstra emergency call person before being transferred to relevant emergency services in the requested state or territory.
“ESTA supports Ambulance Victoria and NSW Ambulance services by dispatching ambulance resources in line with each agency’s direction and agreements in place between them for cases along the NSW/Victorian border,” she said.
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