Help, this is a funding emergency

Call 111. St John is haemorrhaging. In a memo to all staff on Wednesday, chief executive Peter Bradley said the organisation was facing a large deficit in the next financial year and wanted to cut about $30 million from its operating expenses. Its deficit in the last financial year was around $19m.

Bradley put the dire circumstances down to a drastic reduction in donations due to the economic conditions caused by Covid-19. Staff (3444 paid, 8632 volunteers) have been warned to expect cuts ‘‘across all parts of the organisation’’.

Naturally the union representing ambulance staff is unimpressed, especially as it claims it was promised frontline operations would not be affected. Paramedics have enough to worry about without stressing about their job security.

It would indeed be surprising if St John chose to compromise its emergency services to balance its books. Such a serious situation would call for Government help. St

John received a one-off $21m injection in last year’s Budget to bring its annual revenue to around $314m.

That boost clearly did not solve the service’s problems which, in its own words, are historic and longstanding. Currently, the Ministry of Health and ACC fund about three-quarters of St John’s operational costs. To help cover the shortfall, it relies on donations and revenue from commercial activities (like first aid training and medical alarms) and a patient part-charge for non-accident emergency ambulance callouts. In the last financial year, fundraising brought in about $34m.

The staff email is a timely reminder that one of the country’s most important and highly regarded life-saving services is heavily reliant on donations from the public.

This is a situation tantamount to the Fire Service being run on raffle money. These donations don’t just fund nice-to-have services. They fund things like ambulances, paramedic kits and defibrillators.

Various reviews over the years have looked at the sustainability of St John’s funding and the Ministry of Health is again looking at the issue. A plan of action is well overdue.

There is good reason for gratitude to St John and respect for its history but maybe the time has come for the charity to stick to volunteer services such as health shuttles and its youth programme and for its emergency functions to be run by another organisation, funded and regulated like a public service.

The present funding model cannot be allowed to continue. The crucial service needs to be put on a solid footing.

Wellington Free Ambulance, a charity providing an ambulance service to the greater Wellington region, does not appear to have St John’s continual funding problems but ambulance provision is an essential service, not a charity.

St John has lobbied for a fully Government-funded service as demand for ambulance services continues to grow. These services respond to more than 550,000 emergency 111 calls a year, with more than 440,000 seeing an ambulance dispatched.

Announcing the extra funding last year, Health Minister David Clark said it bought time to do the work to make sure sustainable funding happened.

A year later, St John is still sending worrying emails about its inability to carry on.

No doubt it will be bailed out again by the Government but maybe it’s really time for some fundamental change away from a charity-reliant service.