In an extraordinary pre-election fight, Ambulance Victoria is seeking a court order to hide damning secret data about paramedic response times for the most urgent calls for help this year.
A snapshot of highly-sensitive performance data seen by Fairfax Media on Sunday revealed ambulances failed to meet their key performance target in July, taking between 18 and 42 minutes – in different parts of the state – to reach 90 per cent of code one cases.
The state government’s target is for 90 per cent of code one cases to be reached within 15 minutes. Not one part of the state, as broken down by ambulance authorities, met the 15-minute target.
Code one calls are defined as potentially life-threatening time-critical cases that warrant a “lights and sirens” response. They include people having heart attacks, strokes, severe asthma attacks, epileptic seizures, uncontrolled bleeding and the imminent birth of a premature baby that could die without medical assistance.