Clock Ticking Towards Melbourne’s First Ambulance Strike In 30 Years

The clock is counting down towards Melbourne’s first ambulance strike in over 30 years.

Last week 300 members of the Ambulance Employees Association voted to stop work in a month if the Metropolitan Ambulance Service doesn’t meet their concerns over rostering.

Paramedics are angry that they are being forced to start work shifts all over Melbourne with no nottice.

“Paramedics have had enough,” Ambulance Employees Association secretary Steve McGhie [told the Herald Sun ]

“After a 10-hour shift or a 14-hour night shift plus overtime they are expected to drive from one side of Melbourne to the other in order to get home.

“Their kids and families are suffering and fatigue is a threat to their safety.”….
….“Imagine turning up for work at Maroondah and being sent to Laverton and being expected to finish the shift at Laverton before trying to get back to the other side of Melbourne,” he said.

“Finding child care to fit into this is impossible and getting enough sleep between shifts is really difficult.”

This mess needs to be sorted out quickly. Labor must guarantee that there will no disruption to Melbourne’s ambulance service. The buck stops with Bronwyn Pike.

Did it take 20 minutes for an ambulance to reach the scene of the Korumburra tragedy?

The questions about the state of rural ambulance services won’t go away. On Saturday a 49-year-old Warragul woman was killed and three people injured when a ute drove into them as they walked home from a party in Korumburra. The Herald Sun reports that:

Witnesses said it took up to 20 minutes for an ambulance to get to the horrific South Gippsland crash…….

….“It seemed like forever until the ambulance came, people were ringing and saying: `Where the hell are you?’ ”

Korumburra’s ambulance station is only manned by one paramedic. Bronwyn Pike needs to tell us:

How long was it before the first ambulance reached the scene of the accident?

How long was it before any back-up crews were able to get there from Leongatha?

Nine Questions Bronwyn Pike Needs To Answer Pronto

Earlier this week an HIV positive man was charged with deliberately infecting people with the virus over a six year period.

It is believed there could be dozens of unknowing victims in the community.

Disturbingly, it appears that the Department of Human Services was warned 5 years ago, in 2001, about the alleged actions of the man but it appears to have done nothing.

In Victoria it is a criminal offence to knowingly or recklessly spread the HIV infection and authorities have the power to detain such a person.

Bronwyn Pike has some questions to answer about this, namely:

• How many times was DHS warned about the man’s alleged behaviour?

• Did DHS attempt to contact him?

• Has DHS co-operated with the police in their attempts to contact the man’s other alleged victims?

• Why did DHS not attempt to warn his alleged victims?

• Why did DHS not inform police that they had been warned about this man’s actions?

• If DHS believed him to be acting improperly why did they make no move to detain him?

• How long has Health Minister Bronwyn Pike known about this?

But most importantly of all…

• Has DHS received any other warnings from members of the public about someone allegedly spreading the HIV virus?
• What has DHS done about them?

Shards with Sheeds at Caulfield Hospital

Helen with Kevin Sheedy at the Ashleigh Ricketson Centre in the Caulfield General Medical Centre.

Kevin was there to launch the Diabetes Institute Physical Activity Expo for ages 50+ in the Glen Eira area on 9 May. Click here to learn more about the International Diabetes Institute’s program, Lift for Life .

Melbournians Dying Because Ambulances Are Late

50 Victorians are dying each year because ambulance crews can’t reach them in time, ambulance crews have claimed.

On 900 hundred occasions last year, ambulances called to emergencies took at least 20 minutes to respond, according to documents obtained under Freedom of Information by the Herald Sun.

The worst delays happen 20 km from the city and beyond, where ambulance services are thinnest, the newspaper reported.

Sunbury was the worst hit with 60 delays. Other black spots included Melton with 49 delays; Pakenham with 28; Werribee with 22; Healesville with 20 and Cranborne, Lilydale and Mornington with 16. The situation is so bad that paramedics said that residents in some outlying suburbs should consider moving if they suffer a serious condition that could require urgent care.

Other paramedics said they could not guarantee residents on the city fringe they could reach their homes within 12 minutes – the optimum time required to save a life. Of the 910 patients forced to wait 20 minutes or more –; 325 waited at least 25 minutes; 96 waited half an hour or more and nine waited for more than 40 minutes.

Patients included those suffering from heart attacks, strokes, car accidents and pregnancy complications.

Figures show last financial year that the Metropolitan Ambulance Service (MAS) missed its target of responding to 90 percent of all Code One emergencies within 14 minutes. The average wait stretched to 15 minutes. Healesville, which dealt with 202 emergency calls in the first three months, recorded 90 percent response times of 29 minutes in January; 28 minutes in February and 27 minutes in March – with 20 cases taking even longer.

In January the 90 percent Code One response for the Coldstream-based ambulance was 35 minutes with two calls taking even longer. Other major ambulance black spots include Gladysville – 32 minutes in February; Cockatoo – 27 minutes in January; Portsea – 22 minutes in January and Emerald 20 minutes in January.

These figures are unacceptable considering it takes three minutes for the brain to start dying if you stop breathing. Paramedics have said the lack of local resources – particularly in growth areas – verges on the criminally negligent.

Earlier this year I met concerned residents from the Kinglake area in Parliament. They are desperate for a new ambulance station but have had no luck in persuading Bronwyn Pike of the urgency of their needs.

Doubts Growing About HealthSMART as Contractor’s Share-price Plummets

Victoria’s troubled HealthSMART project is under further scrutiny after the share-price of a major contractor plummeted. The $323m project, which is designed to manage the Victorian health system’s IT needs, is over 18 months late, or as a government spokesman reluctantly admitted to The Sunday Age in March, “depending on what is meant by target dates, there has been slippage across the program”.

Now there is more trouble brewing, with The Australian reporting that the company iSoft, which has a $22.5m contract to supply patient management software has lost 75% of its market value this year.

iSoft’s woes stem from its contracts with Britain’s National Health Service. In January its shares fell sharply after it revealed to the market that “…it is now clear that delivery of iSOFT application solutions to NHS Trusts will occur, in general, later than previously expected by the company. “ This followed the November publication by The Sunday Times of a leaked email which showed that massive delays are expected across the 6 billion pound ‘Connecting For Health’ project.

These problems were known at the time iSoft was granted the $22.5m contract for HealthSMART.

This not the first time that questions have been asked about HealthSMART. In August 2004, the DHS admitted that the tender process had been compromised after internal briefing documents were leaked to a potential bidder. This followed the revealation in July by Australian Financial Review that the diasppointed tenderer IBA had

“…. raised concerns over the probity of the patient and client management tender and lawyers acting for the software maker ….[had] sent two letters to HealthSmart’s probity auditor querying the involvement of one Human Services executive in the project.The executive, IBA has claimed, was formerly employed by TrakHealth, had personal relationships with a senior iSoft executive and a consultant to the company, and attended social functions as a guest of iSoft during the tender process.

The government has been extremely secretive about the whole HealthSMART project. When The Sunday Age asked in March for details about 7 different contracts they were given the run-around. As Jason Dowling commented:

THE State Government’s spin doctors were in overdrive when The Sunday Age questioned them about contracts for a new health IT system. After waiting a week for a reply, this is how seven different questions on how many consultants were employed under seven different contracts were answered: “HealthSMART engagements are based on a capped cost of deliverables and are not for particular individuals - organisations are engaged that have clearly demonstrated they can fulfil the tasks required. Whether one resource is allocated to ensure delivery of this service or 10 resources, it is the decision of the organisation providing the services. The terms and conditions of the engagement clearly state the expected deliverables.” The answer was repeated for seven separate questions. People are now “resources” in the world of spin and the public has no right to know how many people are being employed under taxpayer-funded $1000-a-day contracts.

In September Dowling reported that a company controlled by a former DHS contractor had won a closed tender worth $425,000 a year. The contract, worth $849,107, was granted to the company Arbiter with the work to be split between two people, Norma Fredrickson and Anthony Bibby. Bibby later left the company - and was promptly employed by the DHS to project manage HealthSMART. The government claimed that the price paid to Arbiter would drop but was unwilling to say by how much. Fredrickson had earlier received other contracts as part of HealthSMART, but again the government was unwilling to say how much they were worth. At that time Bronwyn Pike’s spin-doctor Ben Hart was indignant at suggestions that HealthSMART was running late. “It is on track both in terms of timelines and the budget — there is no basis for allegations that it is behind schedule,” he told The Sunday Age. Except that it wasn’t on time.

Given Labor’s track-record, would anyone like to bet that it’s on buidget?

500 Victorians Die Each Year Waiting For Surgery

About 500 Victorians are dying each year while waiting for surgery, The Age reports today. Doccuments obtained under Freedom of Information laws showed that 1507 people were removed from waiting lists in the last three financial years because they had died. The Royal Australian College of Surgeons is urging the government to investigate the figures. While not all the people on the list died because they didn’t have their operation, some, like the 29 people who needed cardiac surgery, almost certainly did.

DEATHS BEFORE SURGERY

YEAR NUMBER

• 2002-03 504
• 2003-04 527
• 2004-05 476

NUMBER OF DEATHS BY SPECIALITY

• Urology 395
• Opthamology 339
• General Surgery 247
• Orthopedic 197
• Plastic 144
• Vascular 71
• Ear, nose and throat 38
• Cardio-thoracic 29

Source: Department of Human Services, quoted in The Age, 23/5/06

ALL MATERIAL ON THIS WEBSITE AUTHORISED BY HELEN SHARDEY, SUITE 1/193 BALACLAVA RD, CAULFIELD NORTH

Shardey Decides To Use Her Conscience Vote

As the Shadow Minister for Multicultural Affairs in 2001, I had carriage of the original Racial and Religious Tolerance Bill for the Liberal Party.

The model bill that the Government originally proposed, was not supportable. After my colleagues and I embarked on a long process of consultation we reached agreement with the Government on a bill which came before the parliament. As part of this process I worked closely with the Jewish community which gave me a great deal of assistance.

The resulting Act makes it illegal to vilify or incite hatred of people on the basis of either their race or religion.

Subsequently, the implementation of the Act had some unintended consequences, which the recent ammendments before the parliament were aimed at addressing. The Liberal Party had an additional amendment which it felt would improve the legislation, and supported the proposed changes. As with the first bill, Liberal members were given a conscience vote.

The National Party had opposed the original legislation and opposed the recent amendments. The National Party also proposed an amendment to remove religion from the Act.

I felt in all conscience that I could not support the National Party amendment.

Let me say that all speakers from all parties on the legislation said that they did not believe our society should tolerate the incitement to hate or vilify anyone on any basis and all supported our tolerant and diverse state.

I do not believe that anyone should be able to incite hatred or vilify any person on the basis of either their race or their religion, because I appreciate that a person’s race does not determine their religion and vice versa.

I pointed out to the parliament that members of the Jewish community in my experience regard their religion as somewhat different to their race. In fact members of the Jewish faith are of many races or different ethnic backgrounds, be they Polish, Hungarian, Russian, Yemenite or Ethiopian.

I also believe we can legislate to protect our communities from vilification without denying people their right of free speech. The right to freedom of speech is the very essence of Australia’s democracy, but that right also carries responsibilities toward others.

HELEN