At least 20 people died waiting for an ambulance since 2020, data shows

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At least 20 people have died waiting for an ambulance since 2020, new figures provided to Victoria’s budget estimates show.

A parliamentary committee also heard that more than 9500 nurses had left the state’s health sector in 2022.

Paramedics made it to 62.8 per cent of urgent Code 1 call-outs within 15 minutes in 2022-23 – below the target of 85 per cent.Credit: Wayne Taylor

Speaking at Victoria’s public accounts and estimates committee on Friday, Department of Health secretary Euan Wallace confirmed the number of “sentinel events” reported by Ambulance Victoria and investigated by officials.

These are defined as incidents where a patient has called an ambulance, but one was not available in time.

Wallace said 10 of these incidents were recorded in the 2020-21 financial year and another 10 in 2021-22. In all of these cases, the people died.

Health Department secretary Euan Wallace.Credit: Simon Schluter

Data for sentinel events in the 2022-23 financial year has not been released.

When asked how many patients had been left waiting for help, Ambulance Victoria chief executive Jane Miller said this was best represented by the agency’s response times.

In 2022-23, paramedics made it to 62.8 per cent of urgent Code 1 call-outs within 15 minutes – below the target of 85 per cent. In 2021-22, paramedics responded to 67.5 per cent of call-outs in time.

“I would also state there was also record demands across some of those quarters,” Miller told the committee.

For the first quarter of 2023, the fourth-busiest period on record, the Code 1 response rate was 66 per cent.

A separate report into Victoria’s triple-zero service previously found that 33 Victorians died from emergencies linked to delays in answering calls between December 2020 and May 2022.

The Inspector-General of Emergency Management found the COVID-19 pandemic had put significant pressure on the health system and answer times had blown out to as much as 10 minutes.

A Victorian government spokesperson said every sentinel event was a tragedy.

“It’s our responsibility to learn from each and every event to ensure that it does not happen again,” they said.

As workforce shortages continue to put pressure on the health sector, the committee heard that 9520 Victorian nurses left the profession in 2022. Of these, 1174 were aged over 65.

That’s an increase on 2021 when 7067 left.

Departmental officials also said that on average about 17 per cent of nursing students withdrew from their courses.

Opposition Leader John Pesutto said the data showed health professionals were leaving because of strain on the system.

“We live in Victoria where we are proud to have an aspiration to have the best health system in the world, but we’re not getting that,” he said.

“People dying while waiting for an ambulance. Nurses, among our most treasured health professionals, leaving the profession in droves because they’re burnt out.

“We have the world’s best health professionals, our nurses and doctors and allied health professionals. But we have the worst government managing our health system.

The Victorian government spokesperson said the government was investing in growing Victoria’s healthcare workforce, including 7000 workers who had joined the system since 2022 as part of their pandemic repair plan.

In other evidence provided to the committee for the 2022-23 financial year, it was revealed that 19,998 patients used taxis in non-urgent scenarios which meant they did not have to use an ambulance.

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