Elderly man dies after ambulance takes five hours to attend

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Authorities are investigating after a Melbourne man died after waiting five hours for an ambulance.  The 70-year-old suffered a head injury and called triple zero but help arrived too late.  It comes as union bosses questioned the reliability of ambulance call-taking and dispatch processes.

Transcript

00:00The 70-year-old Blackburn man called triple zero just before 11.30 on Thursday night last week

00:09after falling at home just a suburb away from Box Hill Hospital.

00:14The ambulance union says by the time paramedics arrived five hours later, they were too late.

00:21Well, this is obviously a really distressing event.

00:24Authorities are now trying to understand what caused the delay.

00:28The ambulance union says there are broader concerns about how emergencies are handled.

00:34There's a reason not to be confident when they call triple zero that they will be prioritised as an emergency

00:39and get an emergency ambulance straight away.

00:42That's because so many other cases are categorised as emergencies that just shouldn't be.

00:47At a parliamentary inquiry today, the ambulance union blamed delays on call-taking and dispatching software

00:53that they say often sends paramedics to non-emergencies,

00:57including a lights and siren response to a call for help for an ingrown hair.

01:02The call taker followed the algorithm.

01:05Do you have pain? Yes.

01:06Where is the pain? My chest.

01:08On that basis alone, the software dispatches that case as a potential heart attack.

01:12I'm not going to apologise for the fact that it errs on the side of caution.

01:16Paramedics previously worked with triple zero call-takers to fix software inaccuracies.

01:23But the inquiry heard claims that stopped amid liability concerns for overriding the algorithms.

01:30The Labor government has been promising to fix this system for years and still people are dying because it's not.

01:35Ambulance Victoria says it's engaging with the inquiry and eager to continually improve its services.

01:42Victorians continuing to face lengthy waits for vital care.

01:46Victorians 1

Category

Transcript

Recommended