❓ Ms. Mitchell questions the effectiveness of additional funding injected into St John Ambulance. The Minister for Health defends the funding, highlighting improved service standards and cost-effectiveness compared to other states.
AnsweredQoN 350Legislative Assembly
QuestionView source ↗
ST JOHN AMBULANCE — FUNDING
350. Ms A.R. MITCHELL to the Minister for Health:
Before I ask my question, on behalf of the member for Eyre I
acknowledge the students of Castletown Primary School from Esperance who are in
the public gallery this afternoon.
It has been two years since the state government injected
significant additional funding into the St John Ambulance service following the
Greg Joyce review that the minister initiated. Can the minister please advise
whether the additional funds spent have achieved those desired outcomes?
350. Ms A.R. MITCHELL to the Minister for Health:
Before I ask my question, on behalf of the member for Eyre I
acknowledge the students of Castletown Primary School from Esperance who are in
the public gallery this afternoon.
It has been two years since the state government injected
significant additional funding into the St John Ambulance service following the
Greg Joyce review that the minister initiated. Can the minister please advise
whether the additional funds spent have achieved those desired outcomes?
AnswerView source ↗
Members will be surprised to know that the answer to this
question bears some resemblance to the answer to the first question I was
asked. Members may ask how that could be, because this question is related to
St John Ambulance and the other question was related to the contracting-out of
services at Fiona Stanley Hospital. The answer to that lies in the fact that we
are the only state that contracts out the provision of ambulance services to
the private sector. In every other state they come under the umbrella of
government. There was a huge amount of pressure from a certain union to take
over and purchase back the service, if we like, from St John and to take over
the management and control of ambulance services. Not only did we find with the
Serco contract that there were significant savings to government, but guess
what the case is with the contracting-out to St John? It is able to provide a
service to the state that is as good as that of any state in the country at a
price far, far less than the cost in every other state of Australia. St John
provides an excellent service. There is no doubt that before we came to
government, over a period of years, the funds required to keep that service to
an adequate standard had dropped out. I am not sure who was in government at
the time that all those things occurred, but funnily enough, those things
probably occurred in the seven years leading up to when we came into
government. Not enough money was being put into St John and its standards of
service in meeting the requirements of response times were suffering. Over four
years we have injected an additional $149.6 million into that service partly —
Mr R.H. Cook : It's
a contract, not a grant.
Dr K.D. HAMES : It
is a contract, but the Labor government was not providing enough money. It was
not giving St John enough money to put in the service it required to properly
deal with ambulance services in this state. We have done that. We have put in
nearly $150 million, partly from our normal funds and partly from royalties for
regions funds, to carry those additional services in the country. We have had a
huge improvement in the standards of service, so that now we have St John
exceeding all the response times in this state. It has put on an extra 22
ambulance crews for the day shift, eight additional crews overnight and 14 additional
public patient transport crews, which are critical in moving patients and which
are critical for members such as the member for Bunbury; the ambulance service
spends a lot of its time transporting patients and was not able to respond
adequately in the time required. All of those things have made a huge
difference. The number of all calls to services has gone up; there has been a
12 per cent increase in activity during that time and St John has been able to
significantly improve all of its standards of service. There were 122 000 calls
to 000 with 94.7 per cent of calls being answered within the 10-second target;
that is far higher than we have had before. Therefore, we get an excellent
service from St John Ambulance; it is another plus for the contracting-out of
services in this state.
question bears some resemblance to the answer to the first question I was
asked. Members may ask how that could be, because this question is related to
St John Ambulance and the other question was related to the contracting-out of
services at Fiona Stanley Hospital. The answer to that lies in the fact that we
are the only state that contracts out the provision of ambulance services to
the private sector. In every other state they come under the umbrella of
government. There was a huge amount of pressure from a certain union to take
over and purchase back the service, if we like, from St John and to take over
the management and control of ambulance services. Not only did we find with the
Serco contract that there were significant savings to government, but guess
what the case is with the contracting-out to St John? It is able to provide a
service to the state that is as good as that of any state in the country at a
price far, far less than the cost in every other state of Australia. St John
provides an excellent service. There is no doubt that before we came to
government, over a period of years, the funds required to keep that service to
an adequate standard had dropped out. I am not sure who was in government at
the time that all those things occurred, but funnily enough, those things
probably occurred in the seven years leading up to when we came into
government. Not enough money was being put into St John and its standards of
service in meeting the requirements of response times were suffering. Over four
years we have injected an additional $149.6 million into that service partly —
Mr R.H. Cook : It's
a contract, not a grant.
Dr K.D. HAMES : It
is a contract, but the Labor government was not providing enough money. It was
not giving St John enough money to put in the service it required to properly
deal with ambulance services in this state. We have done that. We have put in
nearly $150 million, partly from our normal funds and partly from royalties for
regions funds, to carry those additional services in the country. We have had a
huge improvement in the standards of service, so that now we have St John
exceeding all the response times in this state. It has put on an extra 22
ambulance crews for the day shift, eight additional crews overnight and 14 additional
public patient transport crews, which are critical in moving patients and which
are critical for members such as the member for Bunbury; the ambulance service
spends a lot of its time transporting patients and was not able to respond
adequately in the time required. All of those things have made a huge
difference. The number of all calls to services has gone up; there has been a
12 per cent increase in activity during that time and St John has been able to
significantly improve all of its standards of service. There were 122 000 calls
to 000 with 94.7 per cent of calls being answered within the 10-second target;
that is far higher than we have had before. Therefore, we get an excellent
service from St John Ambulance; it is another plus for the contracting-out of
services in this state.
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