Victoria's emergency calls system has failed to meet the state watchdog's performance standard despite a $115-million funding boost in March, a new report shows.
The Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority report showed monthly call answer time statistics improved after the funding was allocated, but the authority was still failing to meet the Inspector-General for Emergency Management's (IGEM) performance target by June this year.
"With the Delta and Omicron COVID-19 waves, we had 38 days where [the number of ambulance calls] exceeded … 3,000, peaking at 3,849 on 1 January 2022," the report said.
"Extreme demand combined with staff furloughs made it very difficult for us to meet ambulance call answer performance targets."
Performance results show the ESTA answered 64.2 per cent of emergency calls within five seconds between July 2021 and June this year, well below the inspector-general's benchmark of 90 per cent.
In January 2022, the authority's monthly performance hit a low of 39 per cent of emergency calls answered within five seconds.
By June this year, that figure had improved to 86.2 per cent, but still failed to meet the inspector-general's target.
In May, the Victorian Government announced the ESTA would be re-badged as Triple Zero Victoria, after a review of the organisation by former police commissioner Graham Ashton found "continued and systematic underperformance".
Demand times for triple 0 calls hit a high
The review was commissioned in October 2021 after growing reports of the ESTA's call centre crashing, putting Victorians at risk.
A dozen Victorians died as a result of ambulance delays between October 2021 when the review began and May this year when it was completed, according to figures from a separate report released earlier this year.
The ESTA's annual report stated ambulance demand hit an all-time high during the coronavirus pandemic, with authority receiving an average of 412 more calls a day than in the previous financial year.
In March, the government allocated the extra $115.6 million as part of a package that included hiring 120 additional call-takers.
The annual report showed the ESTA hired 91 new staff in the past financial year, with 68 of those being frontline call-takers.
It boosted the total number of frontline call-takers from 680 to 748.
In 2021–22, the ESTA answered more than 2.8 million emergency and non-emergency calls — more than 7,600 calls a day, or one call every 11 seconds.
The report stated more than 1.9 million of these calls came through the Triple Zero service.
The ESTA dispatched ambulances, fire crews or police to more than 2.2 million incidents in the same period.
