Melbourne‘s Maroondah Hospital is being accused of obstructing the ambulance service after refusing to release a crew to answer an emergency call for a patient who then couldn’t be saved.
The Victorian Ambulance Union is arguing an Ambulance Victoria (AV) intensive care crew shouldn’t have been stuck in a corridor with a non-urgent patient when a man in cardiac arrest needed help.
“They spoke to the hospital ‘we need to go, we need to get to this patient that’s in cardiac arrest, we can save a life here’ but the hospital declined to let them go,” union secretary Danny Hill claimed.
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“AV has to go back to its core work of being an emergency service.”
According to the health minister, crews did respond in the recommended time but couldn’t save the patient.
“I want to express my condolences to the family who have lost a loved one,” Victoria’s health minister Mary Anne Thomas said.
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The union wants the case from June examined.
“There are laws against obstructing emergency workers from doing their job,” Hill said.
The complaint comes a week after a Mobile Intensive Care Ambulance (MICA) crew was called to the same hospital to treat a patient.
“The investigation is still ongoing,” Thomas said.
There is some hope a new urgent care clinic nearby will help with demand.
“Obviously it’s deeply concerning,” federal health minister Mark Butler said.
“This is a pressure that’s being faced for hospital systems right across the country.”
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The pressure on the ambulance service is not the only issue weighing on Victoria’s state government.
New documents have revealed hospitals came so close to running out of money last year they needed an urgent bail out.
“They couldn’t pay their bills, they couldn’t pay their doctors and nurses,” shadow health minister Georgie Crozier said.
The minister asked the treasurer for a $422 million top-up.
“It’s not a bailout,” Thomas said.
“It’s not unusual to seek additional funding through the course of the year and that’s what I did.”
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