Support for St John ‘not enough’
A single-crew ambulance will have some relief with an extra pair of hands, but the support will not be from a qualified paramedic.
Instead, emergency medical assistants will help many St John paramedics who attend critical incidents on their own.
About $59.2 million will be pumped into the service over four years to ensure all emergency road ambulance callouts are doublecrewed by 2021, Health Minister Jonathan Coleman announced yesterday.
The pre-Budget announcement sees funding for 375 ‘‘new emergency medical and paramedic roles’’ to augment ambulances that are currently only staffed by one.
Emergency road ambulance callouts are almost entirely double-crewed in the Wellington region. For the rest of the country, last year nearly 38,500 of the 393,000 callouts were single-crewed – about 10 per cent.
At a press conference at the St John National Headquarters in Auckland yesterday, Coleman said single crews would be eliminated and there would be a ‘‘mix’’ of qualified medics for each crew.
‘‘It’s like the emergency room, you get a range of people in the team. So there’ll be a paramedic on the crew but there’s also this position of emergency medical assistant [EMA] and some of those people will be part of the mix.’’
Assistant Health Minister Peter Dunne said EMAs would be fully trained.
‘‘These EMAs are people who have a level of skill, they’re certainly able to work alongside a paramedic,’’ he said.
St John chief executive Peter Bradley welcomed the announcement, saying the end of single crewing was one of the most significant developments in the history of St John service.
‘‘This is what we asked for . . . the whole recommendations have been implemented fully and we’re absolutely over the moon.’’
The package also introduced a new model to increase St John’s baseline funding and meet growing demand for ambulance services while addressing historic shortfalls.
The ambulance services are funded through Vote Health and ACC.
Vote Health committed $31.2m, with an additional $28m coming from ACC. This cost will be met from a combination of the ACC Non-Earners’ Account, which is funded from general taxation and ACC levies.
The pre-budget announcement left many feeling deflated.
Ambulance Professionals First, the union representing the majority of New Zealand’s ambulance professionals, said funding needed to go towards training and employing qualified ambulance officers, not assistants.
Spokeswoman Lynette Blacklaws said the ambulance sector was in urgent need of a funding boost, but the Government was taking ‘‘short cuts.’’
‘‘In metropolitan areas ambulances are crewed with two qualified ambulance officers. This means they can care for multiple patients at a single incident, they can consult with each other and they have the benefit of a second opinion when making critical medical decisions in crisis situations,’’ she said.
‘‘We want to see that level of service right across the country, not just in the major population centres.’’
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters called the Government’s announcement ‘‘a blister patch approach’’.
‘‘[Sunday’s] announcement of 375 extra medical personnel will be welcomed only because ambulance services are desperate,’’ Peters said.
‘‘National has cynically ignored the needs right till we are on the verge of the election.’’