Ambulance Response Project reduces lights and sirens
Published: 29 January 2019
A new project undertaken by Healthdirect Australia is saving ambulance resources by helping ambulance services better prioritise patients transferred from the healthdirect helpline to triple zero (000).
Previously, when a healthdirect nurse determined a caller needed an ambulance, most frequently an emergency (‘lights and sirens’) response was dispatched by ambulance services.
Audit evidence, however, showed that this was not appropriate for many clinical presentations and a less urgent ambulance may have been more appropriate.
healthdirect is helping ambulance services direct resources to patients in most need.
New clinical response categories
Working with our service providers and ambulance services, we formed a clinical panel and developed three new clinically-appropriate timeframes for calls referred from healthdirect to triple zero (000):
- Emergency response – a ‘lights and sirens’ response for calls where the patient is compromised or likely to deteriorate
- Immediate response – a response within 20—30 minutes for patients where the condition requires urgent intervention
- Time-sensitive response – within an hour, usually for patients who will require an ambulance for transport for clinical, mobility or social reasons.
Saving ambulance resources
As a result of this project, additional clinically-useful information is provided by the healthdirect nurses when calls are handed to triple zero (000). This information may assist ambulance services in prioritising patients according to their clinical need.
Since implementation, almost half (49.1%) of calls referred to triple zero (000) have been determined as requiring a time-sensitive response, helping ambulance services direct resources to patients in most need.
Last reviewed: January 2019