Ms JODIE HARRISON (Charlestown) (19:56): In recent months my office has heard from many constituents who are stranded by our health system, either waiting for an ambulance or waiting in an ambulance for emergency health care. The member for Wallsend, who is currently in the chair, spoke earlier this evening about issues with paramedics and ambulances in her electorate. Our paramedics are being pushed to the limit in a health service that is understaffed and under-resourced. I have previously told a story in this place of a 96-year‑old cancer patient who was refused an ambulance because his condition was deemed not life-threatening. Tonight I add the experiences that have been shared with me since then.
I have heard the story of an 86-year-old constituent who waited five hours for an ambulance following a suspected stroke. Once the ambulance arrived at John Hunter Hospital, she was forced to wait for hours before seeing a doctor. My office has also heard about a small child in my electorate who was dangerously close to death after suffering anaphylactic shock. The 000 call service initially failed to connect, causing a delay in the ambulance arrival. Fortunately, a neighbour with an EpiPen and a local medical professional came to their aid, administering doses ahead of the ambulance's arrival. Without the quick intervention of nearby community members, this could have been a tragedy for the family, as the member for Wallsend would know.
I have also heard from the family of a local man who suffered a stroke. Luckily for him, it was a minor stroke and he was taken to John Hunter Hospital, where a CT scan was carried out quickly. After his CT scan, this man was not taken to a hospital bed but back to the ambulance bay, where he waited for a monitored bed in the stroke ward to become available. He sat there for 12 hours in increasingly cramped conditions, as more and more emergencies were brought into the hospital. The man's wife contacted my office not to complain about the services of the paramedics who tended to him but to question what was going wrong in the system to delay the handover of patients and prevent emergency crews getting back on the road. She said that he was well looked after by the paramedics, was comfortable and his needs were minimal.
She described the area becoming increasingly overcrowded with patients, staff, paramedics and CareFlight crews. They were literally shoulder to shoulder, bumping into each other as the evening wore on. While all the people there did a fabulous job, struggling in this hectic space, she wondered why they were being required to do so. She said it did not seem efficient to have the highly trained ambulance crews waiting around and babysitting patients. Her assessment is supported by figures from the Bureau of Health Information, which paint a bleak picture. From October to December last year, the median time it took an ambulance to reach urgent cases in the Lake Macquarie East area, which covers most of the Charlestown electorate, was 25.2 minutes. That is up more than three minutes from the same period in 2020. For emergency cases, the wait was 14.3 minutes, which is up 1½ minutes. In the most life-threatening emergencies, it took ambulances 9½ minutes to reach patients, which is an increase of one minute.
They are the worst ambulance response times we have seen in a decade. This data, which comes from before the full extent of the Omicron wave hit, fits into an overall upward trend in waiting times, which have only been accelerating for more than five years now. The responsibility for this collapse does not belong with the paramedics and health workers. New South Wales urgently needs another 1,500 paramedics just to bring staffing ratios in line with other States.
It is unacceptable that in 2022 people in life-threatening situations are being left to wait longer and longer. It is unacceptable that the situation has been allowed to deteriorate for years now, when quarter after quarter we see the raw figures painting a picture in stark black and white. It is unacceptable that paramedics are being pushed to their breaking point and beyond. It is unacceptable that paramedics do not have the resources they need to do their important work. In the end, it is the patients who suffer from this lack of action. The way that we treat people in the most dire situations says a lot about our community. We are leaving people who are sick and in need of help and assistance in very unsafe situations and at risk by not properly resourcing paramedics.
