Winter pressures stretch St John

The public is being urged to not use ambulances as surrogate GPS, as nonemergency requests stretch St John staff.

Callouts during the coronavirus lockdown declined for road trauma but treatment requests for minor conditions grew by about 20 per cent as GPS closed their doors in favour of phone consultations.

There is concern this will heighten as flu season takes hold, with people’s anxiety piqued by Covid-19 fears, while callouts to road trauma and recreational injuries return to normal level.

Calls to St John on flu-like symptoms usually triple in July and August. With such a high volume of non-emergency calls, Manawatu¯’s regional operational manager Steve Yanko is concerned priority patients with urgent needs may face longer waits for assistance.

‘‘There’s a cohort of people that don’t have a GP or access to primary care, so they default to ringing an ambulance at 2 in the morning when they have a chest infection they can’t shake.

‘‘There’s a myth that if you ring an ambulance that you’ll get seen at ED sooner, that is an absolute myth that we want to dispel because it’s not the case.’’

St John needed to ensure it was responding to cases on merit. If paramedics were tied up with a patient with a minor complaint, there could be no-one to respond to a person in cardiac arrest.

About 25 per cent of calls to St John are non-life threatening issues, such as infections, sprains, cramps or earache, and could potentially divert resources away from someone in more urgent need.

It was a national and international trend worsened by a shortage of family doctors in rural areas, Yanko said.

Horowhenua puts pressure on a limited resource. With an ageing population and many without access to— or not signed up to — a general practice, staff often attend callouts that would have been more appropriately treated by a GP or via Healthline.

St John had responded to about 15,000 calls in Manawatu¯ in the past year.

The service has implemented the 111 Clinical Hub phone triage system so fleets are able to attend priority calls first.

‘‘It provides patients who have nonurgent illnesses and injuries with appropriate advice and treatment care closer to home, by having an experienced registered nurse or paramedic call the patient back and undertake a detailed assessment.’’

For health questions and queries that are not medical emergencies, people are asked to call Healthline on 0800 611116.