CARE ACCOUNTABILITY RESPECT EXCELLENCE

Recently the Victorian Ambulance Union (VAU) requested documents under Freedom of Information from Ambulance Victoria (AV). AV has denied access to these documents.

The information sought by the VAU related to a number of programs of work called Revised Ambulance Dispatch (RAD) which was a project that was aimed at placing paramedics into the ESTA dispatch process to improve accuracy and ensure that dispatch coding aligned to patient acuity and sent he right resource to the right patient.

This is work that the union supported, however the reform was halted during the COVID pandemic and to date no further work has been undertaken by AV and ESTA to complete it.

The VAU have advocated to the Victorian Government to revisit and complete this work on RAD to bring genuine reform to call-taking and dispatch. This is vital to avoid paramedics being dispatched to low acuity cases, NEPT being dispatched to high acuity cases, reduce unnecessary workload, and improve the response to the community.

While the VAU consider its legal options to take the matter further, we will continue to advocate for reform to call-taking and dispatch, on our own if we must.

If only AV treated your private information with the same level of confidentiality as their own.

In Solidarity