Leading a diagnostic overview of the dispatch process and the potential for business improvements that would positively impact ambulance response times

Project

Dispatch diagnostic overview

Client

Ambulance Victoria

Ambulance Victoria (AV) is responsible for providing emergency medical transport, pre-hospital care and non-emergency stretcher and clinic transport services for around 5.2 million people throughout Victoria, an area of almost 227,600 square kilometres.

AV is an integral component of the health care system and consequently a significant infrastructure is in place to enable a rapid emergency response and delivery of a high standard of pre-hospital care to the community.  The organisation is also responsible for providing air ambulance services throughout the state.

We were engaged to lead and conduct a diagnostic overview of the dispatch process and the potential for business improvements that would positively impact ambulance response times as the speed with which a patient reaches hospital and the quality of clinical care administered by paramedics can affect a patient’s chances of recovery.

The diagnostic overview involved a high degree of complexity through the existence of numerous internal and external dependencies across four main areas, within AV which are:

  • ESTA – centralised authority responsible for operational communications support
  • ERTCOMM – covers all Emergency Ambulance responses
  • NETCOMM – covers all stretcher ambulances for non-emergency transport
  • REFCOMM – handles low-priority calls, unlikely to require ambulance transport, triaged through clinical advisers rather than triggering an immediate ambulance call-out

The dispatch review crossed over all four areas as they are intrinsically linked and each area’s performance has an impact on the others.  The review involved observing and recommending processes in the following areas;

  • answering 000 calls and entry into the CAD system
  • observing the dispatcher role as to how resources are deployed to each code
  • observing and understanding the role of the Communications Support Paramedic (CSP)
  • observing and understanding the role of the Duty Manager
  • observing and understanding the role of the Clinicians role
  • understanding the function and observing calls transferred to REFCOMM for triage to determine what resources are to be sent
  • understanding the function of NETCOMM and its role in non-emergency patient care