Victoria’s ambulance response times have gone backwards, with the highest-priority patients waiting longer for care.
The state’s latest health performance data, released on Friday, February 10, showed it took ambulances an average of 9.53 minutes to arrive at life-threatening incidents in the last quarter of 2022.
That was up from the average of 9.03 minutes reported in the October to December period of 2021.
It also took paramedics longer to get to high-priority or code-one incidents, with an average response time of 13.08 minutes recorded in the latest quarter compared to 12.07 minutes a year earlier.
Ambulance Services Minister Gabrielle Williams said demand for ambulances had been high across the state.
“We saw over 100,000 code-one cases responded to and 3000 calls a day for an ambulance,” she said.
“We’ve got to remember that much of what we’re seeing is not unique to Victoria. The demand on our system that we’ve been experiencing is global.”
There was also a spike in people presenting at the state’s emergency departments, with 452,031 attending hospital in the final quarter of last year.
Despite the surge, average emergency wait times dropped to 20 minutes compared to 23 minutes in the July to September quarter.
The state’s elective surgery waitlist also decreased by 1615 people on the previous quarter, although it was still close to 3000 people higher than at the same time in 2021.
– AAP