News
29th January, 2021
Ambulance Resourcing – New Rural Resources Announcement
The VAU welcomes today’s announcement. It is a positive step forward with targeted increases in resources where they are desperately needed. This would not have been possible without members raising important examples of resourcing gaps.
As members will be aware the Victorian Ambulance Union Incorporated (VAU) have been receiving daily concerns from members about a severe shortfall in ambulance resourcing across Victoria. These concerns have been shared directly with Ambulance Victoria (AV) and the Victorian Government.
On 14 January 2021, the VAU wrote to Premier Dan Andrews raising our concerns about the deteriorating situation in ambulance and seeking significant further investment in ambulance resources.
Today, the Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Member for Melton Steve McGhie, speaking on behalf of the Minister for Health and Ambulance Services, announced a new $14.8 million investment in Ambulance Victoria which will go towards investment in the following new resources:
- 4 Peak Period Units (PPUs) which had been scheduled to be implemented for the 2022/23 financial year will be brought forward to be introduced in February 2021 and located at Bellarine, Bendigo (Eaglehawk), Churchill and Gisborne (Gisborne on-call arrangements will be converted to full rostered shifts);
- the conversion of Beechworth from single officer branch to dual officer branch (which had been scheduled for 2022/23 financial year) will be brought forward to 2021;
- the conversion of the Chiltern ACO team to single officer/ACO on-call;
- the introduction of an additional 12 (twelve) Referral Service Triage practitioner positions (RSTPs);
- the introduction of an additional 7 (seven) PPUs for Metropolitan region for the period commencing March to 30 June 2021, which will be located at Epping, Tarneit, Mernda, Craigieburn, Boronia, Templestowe, Bayside;
- new PPUs (and equivalents) into rural regions to be located at Benalla, Lakes Entrance, Torquay, Castlemaine, Bannockburn (Nightshift), Daylesford (Convert on-call to on-duty); and
- funding for graduates to commence working with AV. 20 graduate paramedics have already started induction. A further 20 are scheduled to start in February 2021 and another 37 will start in March 2021 to fill rural vacancies.
To be clear this funding announcement will not fix all the problems that members have been raising with the union. We will continue advocating for increased ambulance funding to ensure that the resourcing needs of the Victorian community are met and members are not exposed to dangerous and exhausting workloads.
Members are requested to continue to provide any examples of dropped shifts, resourcing gaps and other incidents to the VAU so that we can present this evidence to Government as we continue to advocate for more resources.
In solidarity