Victoria to roll out new ambulance and emergency care standards

Victoria’s Minister for Health Mary-Anne Thomas has announced the new Standards for Safe and Timely Ambulance and Emergency Care for Victorians will be rolled out across all emergency departments (EDs) in 2025 — to support the faster handover of patients arriving via ambulance, support staff in busy EDs and get paramedics back on the road sooner.

Developed following extensive consultation with Ambulance Victoria, clinicians, health services, peak bodies, unions and Safer Care Victoria, the new standards are to help improve patient flow and reduce pressure on the state’s dedicated health workforce; many of the new standards have already been implemented at higher-performing hospitals, including recommendations for preparations, processes and broader operations at the ambulance and emergency interface.

Ensuring patients can get world-class care faster and closer to home is a focus of the standards, addressed through measures including redirection to alternative care settings, enhanced patient transfer procedures, more timely inpatient admissions and early discharges.

“While our ambulance and ED wait times are heading in the right direction — thanks to our hardworking healthcare workers — we know there is more to do, which is why these new standards are so important,” Thomas said. “Despite significant and sustained demand, our hardworking doctors, nurses and ambos are making sure patients continue to receive world-class health care — and these new handover standards will help deliver that care even sooner.”

Austin Hospital

Staff work at the Austin Hospital — identified as a statewide leader — was used as a basis for the standards, as a health service that has successfully and consistently improved ED and patient handover times in recent years. This work sees staff appoint dedicated resources, like a senior clinician, to support faster patient transfers and robust assessment guidelines to transfer suitable patients to the ED’s waiting room.

“We are incredibly proud of the work that has significantly improved ambulance transfer times — and importantly, helped get more ambulances back out into the community, quicker,” Austin Health Chief Executive Officer (Interim) Cameron Goodyear said. “In collaboration with the Department of Health and other services, we’ve been able to build on what we have learned at our service and contributed to these statewide standards, which is great for patients.”

In its quest for better patient flow, in quarter 2, 2024–25: 73% of ambulance arrivals to Austin Health were offloaded within 40 minutes, which was compared to 57% during the same period last year. Also during quarter 2, 2024–25: around 22,100 patients presented to the hospital’s ED, with more than 5800 arriving via ambulance.

A phased approach to implementation

A phased approach will be used to implement the standards, in recognition of the varying capability and capacity across health services, and to ensure implementation is feasible and the positive impacts are sustainable. The standards also complement work underway at 28 hospitals and with Ambulance Victoria to improve timely access to emergency care with initiatives that improve patient flow.

Victoria’s Budget 2024/25 invested a further $146 million into Ambulance Victoria with further investments also having been made to support alternative care options and initiatives to reduce pressure in EDs, including through the Victorian Virtual Emergency Department, Urgent Care Clinics, and Ambulance Victoria’s Secondary Triage Service and Medium Acuity Transport Service.

The new standards are available here, via the Victoria Health website.

Image credit: iStock.com/JazzIRT