30 March 2009

Ambulance staffing at the bottom of the cliff

Green MP Sue Kedgley said revelations that staff and volunteer shortages in ambulance services are forcing nurses to spend hours away from their ward duties - in order to care for patients being transferred - calls into question the viability and safety of these services.

Ms Kedgley was responding to concerns expressed by rural doctors and nurses at the Rural General Practitioners Network conference, held this weekend, over staffing levels at St John's ambulance services.

Ms Kedgley said there was a desperate shortage of trained paramedics in New Zealand, and hundreds more were needed if ambulance services were to be able to respond to emergencies safely, with double crews.

"The situation will remain in crisis, as long as the ambulance emergency service is contracted out to charitable organisations, which are reliant on the availability of volunteers," Green Party Health spokesperson Sue Kedgley said.

St John's operates 185 ambulance stations throughout New Zealand, and the majority rely on the services of volunteers. Volunteer officers for St John are not paid an hourly rate though in unique cases they may be recompensed for any lost wages.

"Ambulance officers responding to emergencies are frontline health professionals, and should be treated as such. Ambulance officers should be regulated as health professionals and the service integrated into our emergency health services," said Ms Kedgley.

"The ambulance sector is also woefully under-funded, and the $10 million 'cash injection' Minister of Health Tony Ryall is talking about is not nearly enough to begin to stem the crisis in the sector."

"The Government promised before the election that it would start funding struggling frontline ambulance services properly," Sue Kedgley said. "It's time they delivered on that promise."

John Key stated in October last year that [as a new Government] 'we are going to be directing as much as we possibly can of new money into the health sector, into frontline services and medicines'.

Green Party Health Services spokesperson Kevin Hague said the problem is particularly acute in rural areas with many accidents attended by only one staff member who must administer aid and then drive the patient to the nearest medical facility.

"Continued failure by successive governments to take the urgent action necessary to fund and provide the necessary infrastructure for rural health services places the lives of rural people at risk and have contributed to a 'hollowing out' of rural New Zealand that makes rural living increasingly untenable," said Mr Hague.

"Getting people to the health services that they need is an absolutely critical part of the health sector."

Note: Ms Kedgley helped initiate an inquiry into the provision of ambulance services by Parliament's Heath Select Committee which found that in some areas of New Zealand 70 percent of emergency call-outs are responded to by single-crewed ambulances. Ms Kedgley has been campaigning since 2004 for a review of New Zealand's ambulance services, which are plagued by problems, from underfunding to single crewing.

Link to St John Press release on compensation for volunteers; http://tinyurl.com/dzs25s

ENDS

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