More paramedics: Labor would add 500 more staff over four years. Photo: Amy Corderoy
An additional 500 paramedics would be hired over the next four years under a Labor election policy announced on Sunday.
Paramedics say the 15 per cent increase in staff over four years will stop dangerous work practices that currently exist in overstretched ambulance stations, where paramedics are sometimes forced to work long hours without days off, and sometimes to attend jobs alone.
Labor leader Luke Foley said the system was overstretched, and the additional resources, which would be gradually rolled out with 125 new positions each year, would help them focus on saving lives.
“Paramedics are one of the most trusted professions in our communities – their arrival at our homes, workplaces and everywhere in-between can literally be the difference between life and death,” he said. “This is about increasing response times, increasing and improving patient care.”
He said the policy would cost $46.6 million over two years, along with $2.1 million for capital costs including 76 additional ambulances and extra equipment such as defibrillators and stretchers.
Steven Fraser, an intensive are paramedic from the mid-north coast, said the new positions were needed and would allow paramedics to treat patients more quickly.
“In our job, time matters, minute matters, and what we want and … what we are getting here is more resources to make those minutes less,” he said. “In order to do the job you have to have the people there, it can’t be done remotely”.
Labor says ambulance response times have increased under the Liberal government to an average of 10.8 minutes last financial year – above a national benchmark of 10 minutes.
The NSW Ambulance service website, which breaks down data by subgroup rather than overall average response time, shows the average daytime response time in the Sydney area decreased over the past three years. However, response times in other parts of NSW and at night have blown out.
Labor’s health spokesman Walt Secord said Labor intended to target the new ambulance positions to areas of need, with half in Sydney and half in rural areas.
He said Labor was also promising more hospital beds in Westmead, the Tweed and St George, which would held prevent “trolley block”, where ambulances were stuck at hospitals unable to offload patients at busy emergency rooms.
“Many paramedics have expressed to us the frustration of getting people to hospital only to find out there’s a shortage of beds,” he said.
In January Fairfax Media revealed patients and paramedics had been kept waiting up to 20 hours in Blacktown Hospital because of bed closures.
Gerard Hayes, the NSW secretary of the Health Services Union, said he hoped the Liberal government would match the promise.
“We have seen over the last three years increases in call-outs that go to 30,000 [extra] a year, and paramedics can’t meet that gap without these resources,” he said.
The Labor policy says there are currently 3435 paramedics, who attend more than one million cases each year.
“Roster vacancies are often unfilled and there are also reports of paramedics being forced to respond to call-outs by themselves,” it says. “This is an unsafe practice for both paramedic and patient”.
The Baird government has committed $150 million to roll-out five new “super” ambulance stations at Kogarah, Bankstown, Blacktown, Liverpool and Penrith, a plan the Labor party said it will also back.
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