The Western Australian (WA) government is co-ordinating a multi-agency response to help the St John Ambulance Service deal with the current staff shortage and speed up ambulance response times.
Senior Department of Health and WA Police representatives are now stationed at the St John’s Ambulance headquarters to assist the service, ensuring appropriate emergency response coordination.
In this unprecedented action, the government is working with St Johns, a privately owned company, to address staff shortage pressures attributable to COVID-19 infections.
This comes as the state deals with an ambulance ramping crisis. The total number of hours ambulances were ramped across Western Australia in 2021 was over 52,000, more than double the number of hours seen in 2020 (25,900), according to St John Ambulance WA, and there is no relief in sight….