Page 3877 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 4 December 2007
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I would also like to reflect on a public forum held with ACT paramedics here in the Assembly just a few months ago. They provided us with an update of the services that they are providing for the ACT community now—in comparison to what used to occur a few years ago. There have recently been substantial changes in the service delivered by ACTAS. These changes have resulted in the delivery of pre-hospital care in the ACT second to none, with intensive-care paramedics operating as autonomous health care providers, utilising a far wider range of interventions and delivering real financial savings to the ACT health budget from the doorsteps of ACT residents.
ACT ambulance paramedics now have increased their skills. They have early intervention options available in pre-hospital care. This has a direct impact on the patient’s length of stay in hospitals and their overall health in terms of ongoing treatment. ACTAS intensive-care paramedics undertake more invasive and non-invasive treatment initiatives in the pre-hospital setting. The patient is presented to the hospital accident and emergency department with several hospital work-up procedures already completed and documented.
This presents real time and cost savings to the hospital. In some circumstances, such as with the 12-lead ECG interpretations and treatment initiatives, the patient will bypass the hospital accident and emergency department altogether and go direct to the area of definitive treatment. Since the introduction of the 12-lead ECG to ambulance, it is evident that the patients are moved to areas of definitive care, including the cardiac catheter laboratory, within much shorter periods, spending less time in the hospital emergency department.
Our ICPs are also able to provide different pharmacology than other areas. There is a new drug that you may have heard of—ketamine—which can now be administered by our ICPs. When you are talking about this sort of thing, you better understand the extra, important work these officers put in if you see something that affects you personally. I want to reflect on an accident that occurred just last week. One of our colleagues—Mr Mike Hettinger, who was a candidate in the last Assembly elections—had a motorcycle accident last week in Deakin. He was severely injured. He is recovering in Canberra Hospital now, but if it was not for our ICPs and their ability to administer this new drug, ketamine, he may well not be there.
The ACT Fire Brigade are also performing very well against their performance measures. In 2006-07 the ACT Fire Brigade attended over 10,000 incidents, which involved over 21,000 responses by operational crews. They achieved a 50 per cent response time to structure fires, of six minutes and nine seconds, against a target time of eight minutes, and a 90th percentile response time within 10 minutes and 24 seconds against a target of 10 minutes. That is an effective emergency services response which should be recognised and for which they should be congratulated.
Another performance target that is worthy of mention is the percentage of structure fires confined to their room of origin. The current figures for this financial year show that 85 per cent are contained to the room of origin against a target of 80 per cent. This is a great result considering that a major contributing factor to meeting this measure is the time that elapses between the fire starting and it being reported.
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