The Auditor-General, Mrs Phu Tam, has cast her merciless eye across the ACT Ambulance Service and found much lacking:
- ACTAS has delivered a complex range of services against growing demand and limited capacity. There was significant scope for improvement in various aspects of ACTAS’ operation
Issues include:
- — Response times to emergency incidents have worsened in recent years and have not met targets set by government.
— Clinical governance systems currently in place were not sufficiently robust to provide assurance of a quality service on patient care.
— Ambulance data were not appropriately collected and analysed. In particular, modelling of ambulance data was not sufficiently developed to enable ACTAS to effectively target service delivery to the Canberra community and to strategically plan for ACTAS’ future operations.
— Non-emergency response services (patient transfers) were not well coordinated and efficiently delivered.
— There were deficiencies in ACTAS planning, documentation of policies and procedures, risk management and performance management and review.
The full report is available.
UPDATED: Simon Corbell has expressed his thrill at these findings, noting: The ACT has the second best ambulance response times in Australia.
When you consider that every other State or Territory has significant rural populations this is not such a great achievement.
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