St John suspects patients managing chronic conditions at home are fuelling record 111 surge

Summarised by Centrist

The service received a record 2,562 calls on Saturday, 34% above normal, and 16,008 calls over the week. Its Emergency Operations Centre was activated for the first time since COVID. 

The service activated its major incident response after receiving 2,562 calls on Saturday, compared with about 1,900 on a normal day. It was the third daily record broken within a week.

Director of ambulance operations Doug Gallagher said Mondays were traditionally busiest because some patients waited until their conditions deteriorated before seeking help.

“If they had been able to access primary care,” he said, it might have prevented their condition reaching the point where an ambulance was required.

Gallagher also suspected winter illnesses following the recent cold snap were contributing to the surge, but stopped short of confirming the cause.

“I would expect that that’s related to the weather snap that we’ve had within the last couple of weeks,” he said.

St John has not provided a breakdown showing which illnesses or medical emergencies are driving the increase.

At peak demand, emergency operators were answering one call every 20 seconds. Patients with non-life-threatening conditions could wait several hours. About 10% of callers are now receiving clinical advice or being directed to another health service instead of having an ambulance dispatched.

Gallagher said ambulance staff were under a lot of strain and sometimes skipping breaks, although response times for the most seriously ill patients remained within safe limits. 

Hospital “ramping”, where ambulances wait to transfer patients into emergency departments, is also affecting response times, although Gallagher said delays were not as severe as they had been several years ago.

Read more at The NZ Herald

Image: Cloventt

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