United Voice News
150 patients a week at risk from intensive care ambulance shake-up
About half of the 300 critically ill patients across Melbourne each week who rely on emergency procedures performed by two intensive care paramedics will be put at greater risk by the State Government’s ambulance shake-up, Ambulance Employees Australia said today.
Yesterday’s Sunday Age revealed that leaked minutes from a Metropolitan Ambulance Service team managers meeting show 11 of Melbourne’s 16 mobile intensive care ambulance (MICA) units are set to have their services cut back.
Elite MICA paramedics treat the city's most complex and demanding cases, such as shootings, stabbings and road trauma victims.
Eleven of Melbourne’s 16 MICA units are set to either have their operating time halved to 12 hours a day or become a "single responder unit," staffed by one paramedic in a passenger vehicle.
MICA units in Brunswick, Prahran, Ivanhoe, Box Hill, Frankston, Dandenong, Laverton North, Ringwood and Bundoora will be replaced with single responder units, which will be based with regular ambulances. MICA units in Clayton and Footscray will become "peak period" units, operating only in the busiest 12 hours of the day.
Single MICA paramedics are unable to perform critical procedures such as rapid sequence intubation, where a patient is placed in an induced coma and a tube placed down their throat.
AEA State Secretary Steve McGhie said 15,000 acutely ill patients each year, or five percent of Melbourne’s total emergency caseload, rely on procedures that can only be performed by two MICA paramedics.
“These cutbacks to Melbourne’s MICA services will cost lives and lead to poorer outcomes for some patients,” he said.
“Some of the most acutely ill patients may now have to wait until they get to hospital before they receive the optimum care available.
“This includes non-breathing asthmatics, cardiac arrest patients, patients with multiple traumas from a car accident and children having an anaphylactic reaction.”
“These are time-critical patients and they may not make it to hospital in time.”
Mr McGhie said that while paramedics welcomed new MICA units at Werribee, Boronia and Eltham North, announced on April 22 as part of the State Government’s $185.7 million ambulance shake-up, this should not be at the expense of existing MICA services.
Mr McGhie said that an AEA analysis had found that that the shake up would also result in an overall reduction of 15 MICA Paramedics across Melbourne.
19 May 2008
