Ambulance ramping in Victoria was associated with dozens of preventable deaths before COVID-19 hit, research has found, with critics saying new figures show the state's health crisis predates the pandemic.
A study by Ambulance Victoria, Monash University, Royal Melbourne Hospital, Alfred Health and the Baker Heart Research Institute analysed the data of more than 200,000 patients who called an ambulance between 2015 and 2019 because of chest pain.
It found that when an ambulance took longer than 17 minutes to offload a patient at a hospital, the patient faced a higher risk of dying within the next 30 days.
An extended wait time also led to an increased risk of the patient calling an ambulance for chest pain in the future.
The median time it took for an ambulance to offload a patient increased from 21 minutes in 2015 to 24 minutes in the first half of 2019.
It found the delays offloading patients, known as ramping, was associated with about 70 preventable deaths in 2018.
The Victorian government has said an escalation in ambulance ramping is due to COVID-related staff shortages, but the study shows ramping was contributing to patient deaths before the pandemic.
This year alone, Ambulance Victoria has called six "code reds", which is when there are no ambulances available to respond to call-outs.
In comparison, only nine were called between 2017 to 2021.
The most recent code red came just after midnight on Tuesday morning and lasted four hours.
Victorian Ambulance Union secretary Danny Hill said on Wednesday that the crisis was taking a toll on emergency workers.
'The system was broken before COVID'
Responding to the study, Victorian Opposition Leader Matthew Guy said Daniel Andrews's government had had eight years in government to set up a functional health system.
"Everyone knows that COVID is not the cause of the issues in the health service," he said.
"It has exaggerated some of them, no doubt, but it's not the root cause of them.
Mr Andrews said the health system was "under enormous strain at the moment, and that is a direct result of the pandemic".
He said that just before the pandemic, Victoria "reported our very best ambulance response times ever".
"We repaired the damage that others did, and we will repair the damage that this virus did as well," he said.
Ambulance ramping refers to when delays at the hospital mean a patient cannot be offloaded, while response times are the time period between triple-0 being phoned and the ambulance arriving.
However, ambulance ramping can lead to worse response times.
The Victorian government announced in the 2022-23 budget that $124 million would be allocated to Ambulance Victoria to recruit 90 extra paramedics.
Paramedics wanting to leave the workforce
Meanwhile, a survey of Victorian paramedics conducted in September and October 2021 found 16 per cent intended to quit the profession within the next year.
Only 26 per cent of respondents said they were not thinking of leaving the profession.
The results of the survey, published on Thursday by Swinburne and RMIT universities, found workplace conditions had declined since an earlier version of the survey was conducted in 2020.
Lara Thynne, a lecturer in management at Swinburne University and co-author of the study, said paramedics reported experiencing increased workloads, creating pressure to perform faster and at a lower standard.
"Across all areas of the workforce, there's higher levels of stress, as well as dissatisfaction, and there's a higher propensity for the intention to leave the profession, which is really worrying," Dr Thynne said.
"We've got a highly skilled workforce — they're not easily replaced.
