Tech failures leaving our ambulances ‘lost’

Erin Pearson
Faulty technology is leaving Geelong ambulances lost in the field, state parliament has heard.
Liberal MLC Jan Kronberg told the upper house ambulance dispatchers were losing track of ambulances due to the fault with “status buttons”.
Staff had noted that the fault made it “difficult to know accurately where your resources are”, she said.
“This sounds like Keystone Kops. It is appalling,” Ms Kronberg said.
Ambulance Employees Association of Victoria’s Steve McGhie confirmed the “widespread” problem.
“The status buttons are pressed by the ambos to inform the communication centre of their whereabouts but they aren’t working,” he said.
“It means the communication centre doesn’t know the status of their ambulances unless they call in but many drivers aren’t even aware of this and don’t know they aren’t working.”
Mr McGhie said the problem left dispatchers unsure whether multiple ambulances were on their way to a single call-out.
“The dangers are dispatchers don’t know where their crews are or whether or not they’re loaded or unloaded,” he said.
“[Dispatchers] lose control of where their crew are, which means more than one vehicle could respond to a call.”
Ambulance Victoria had not responded to the Independent’s calls for comment before the paper went to press.
Meanwhile, Liberal candidate for Geelong Alastair Thomson accused sitting Labor MP Ian Trezise of failing to guarantee the future of McKillop Street’s ambulance station.
Mr Thomson said he believed State Government planned to close the station despite its central location in Geelong.
“Recently situations have arisen where patients have been taken to hospital by police in the back of a divvy van and others have been forced to drive themselves to hospital due to ambulances being unavailable,” he said.
“The local member must immediately guarantee the McKillop Street ambulance station remains open, is properly staffed and resourced to meet the needs of the Geelong community rather than be redeployed to Belmont.”
But Mr Trezise said the McKillop Street station had not housed ambulances for “many years.”
“They run out of Barwon Health,” he said.
“What we’re doing is providing a new space in Belmont. There are plans to shift the radio base from McKillop Street to the Belmont station because that’s all that’s there but these plans haven’t been finalised.”