Andrews chooses Saturday to release details on 33 deaths waiting for ambulances
Saturday, 03 September 2022
Our hearts go out to all those who have lost loved ones and we commend the resilience all Victorians have shown during this difficult time.
Andrews Labor Government, Saturday 3 September 2022.
Here's an extract from the Victorian Government response to the damning report - released on a Saturday to ensure minimum scrutiny and difficult questions.
And the response in full here.
Andrews Government response... by Michael Smith
The report to which the Andrews Government is responding is here:
UPDATE
Here's The Australian's Victorian political reporter Rachel Baxendale's with her take on this disgrace.
At least 33 Victorians died following failures in the state’s ambulance system between December 2020 and May 2022, the state’s Inspector-General for Emergency Management has found.
IGEM Tony Pearce identified 40 potential “adverse events” during the period, which he said were associated with “call answer delays, agency command and control decisions, and/or ambulance resourcing issues.”
“Tragically, 33 of these patients did not survive their emergencies,” Mr Pearce found.
Despite having received Mr Pearce’s review more than three weeks ago, and a promise from Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes that it would be released before the end of August, the Andrews government has chosen to release it on a Saturday morning in September, amid AFL finals.
The 156-page review of Victoria’s emergency ambulance call answer performance has been released alongside a separate 180-page IGEM report into the state’s preparedness for major public health emergencies, including pandemics.
It follows the handing down in May of former police chief Graham Ashton’s damning review of the Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority (ESTA), which the government released two days ahead of the federal election.
Key among Mr Pearce’s findings in his pandemic preparedness report is that Victoria’s classification of emergencies into police, fire and ambulance is a “peculiarly Victorian arrangement” which has “simply served to confuse rather an create benefit to agencies and departments”.
The damning reports come less than three months out from the November state election, and after a week which saw Premier Daniel Andrews seek to gain political advantage from a joint press conference held with Dominic Perrottet, at which the NSW Premier dealt a blow to his Victorian Liberal counterparts by saying the state’s ongoing health crisis was “not unique”.
In his ambulance call answer performance review, Mr Pearce identified “significant declines” in ESTA’s emergency ambulance call answer times, commencing in December 2020, “with ambulance call activity increasing beyond historical highs, and emergency calls queuing for completely unacceptable lengths of time – 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and longer.”