The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, has announced a record $500m investment into ambulance services as part of a comprehensive plan to improve response times.
Sunday’s announcement comes almost one week after the ambulance service was stretched to its limits responding to a mass thunderstorm asthma event across Melbourne and surrounding areas, tackling an unprecedented 1,900 emergency calls in five hours. The event contributed to the deaths of at least six people.
Following Monday’s storm, the government announced a wide-ranging review to examine how Ambulance Victoria and other emergency services responded, and will be led by the inspector general for emergency management.
Ambulance response times will form a significant part of that review. The family of law student Hope Carnevali, 20, who died after suffering an asthma attack during the storm on Monday night, told media last week she died while waiting 40 minutes for an ambulance and they wished they had taken her to hospital themselves.
The new funding would allow the ambulance service to employ 450 more paramedics, put more ambulances on the road and build 15 new and upgraded stations, Andrews said on Sunday.
Key to the plan will be the establishment of six new super ambulance response centres, staffed by more than 200 paramedics to meet the growing demand in Melbourne’s outer suburbs.
The funding includes $50m to hire more clinicians and open more hospital beds, and comes on top of the $144m provided in the latest Victorian budget, which included the $60m specifically to improve ambulance response times.
“Response times are the best they have been in five years, but there’s still more work to do,” Andrews said.
The acting general secretary of Ambulance Employees Australia, Danny Hill, said the announcement was not in response to Monday’s thunderstorm asthma disaster.
“It’s certainly a very impressive investment and drives home the government’s commitment to improving ambulance response times in the community,” Hill said.
“But we’ve been in discussions with the government for some months about this. It’s not something that’s come about since Monday, and I’m pleased to say the government has been consultative with the union, as has Ambulance Victoria.”
However, he said the investment would help paramedics manage any mass influx of emergency calls in response to disasters in future.
“One of the benefits with regards to an event like thunerstorm asthma is the super response centres, which will provide a location where where casual, part-time and flexible-work paramedics can come in and work on a varying roster,” he said.
“It will create a pool of vehicles on call to respond in addition to the normal roster arrangement and will make it more likely extra crews can be put on in a short space of time.”
The ambulance services minister, Jill Hennessy, said the funding had been allocated to where it was most needed.
“I want Victorians to have confidence that in an emergency they will get the care and treatment they need, when they need it,” she said.
