By Norrian Rundle
MELBOURNE — Recent cuts to the Victorian ambulance service has cost lives, according to the Ambulance Employees Association. Within one week there were three "avoidable" deaths of people in their 20s and 30s.
Vince Luppino, an ambulance officer at the Northcote depot, recently wrote to the Age about the effect of the cuts and appeared on the ABC's 7.30 Report. He told Green Left, "The Ambulance Service is one that people take for granted, and under this government they can no longer do that".
The Kennett government has decided to increase the "productivity" of the service. To do this, Jack Firman was appointed chief executive officer. His qualifications are that he was responsible for the corporatisation of Melbourne Water with the loss of many jobs.
"Firman has told us that we are not to refer to the people we service as patients any more. We now have 'customers'", said Luppino.
A recent coroner's report found that there needed to be an increase in the number of shifts and vehicles, management needed to listen to workers and training should be improved. The opposite has happened.
The cuts come after years of static funding under the previous ALP government.
In December, there were more than 100 ambulances servicing the metropolitan area. This is now just over 50. The number of mobile intensive care ambulances, which respond to the most urgent calls, is constant at 11.
However, Luppino told Green Left, "Instead of being on stand-by for emergencies requiring two paramedics, these specialist ambulances are now being used for routine transport of patients to hospitals.
"Also, each now only has one paramedic on board. Paramedics receive four years of training and are accredited to perform intubation — the insertion of a tube down the throat to assist breathing of unconscious patients — and the administration of IV drugs. In many critical cases, both these procedures need to be done simultaneously, which is impossible with only one paramedic."
Ambulance officers, who have three years of training, have been pushing for the extra training to enable them to perform these procedures. However, overall training has been run down. Regional training centres have been closed, which means that re-accreditation, due every nine months, in some cases has not happened for over 18 months.
It is unlikely that any training will occur "on the job", as there is only one crew rostered on at a time at any depot.
The Northcote depot has been reduced to 10 ambulance officers from a previous level of 17. As well, there has been a reduction in the number of paramedics. Pre-December, between 7.30am and 3pm there were three ambulances available for transport and one for emergencies only. There was one ambulance on night shift from 5pm to 7am as well as a transport shift between 3pm and 10pm.
These shifts have been reduced to one day shift from 7am to 5pm and one night shift from 5pm to 7am. These shifts have to handle both transport and emergency work in an area of 10 kilometres by 5 kilometres, with one ambulance.
"As well, we back up depots as far away as Eltham and Camberwell which also have only one ambulance each. The response time to many emergencies has increased significantly", said Luppino.
Ambulance officers are now working longer hours for little extra pay. Previously, they worked an 80-hour fortnight. Now they are working a 48-hour week and more than twice as many night shifts.
Another new "efficiency" is the replacement of ambulance officers in answering emergency calls by typists redeployed from other areas of the public service. This can lead to confusing messages being given to the ambulance crews.
Private contractors have been introduced for transport. There are currently five or six companies operating, and the union claims that their performance on patient care is not up to standard.
Ambulance officers now also face the prospect of fundraising to maintain equipment. Because some depots have been more successful than others, they have different levels of equipment.
With crews reduced to a bare minimum, there is little industrial action that the union can take without further endangering life. What is needed is a campaign that includes the whole union movement as well as community groups. A public meeting on this issue may be one way to start a campaign around these cuts and other attacks on the public health system.