The Allan Labor Government is introducing new standards into Victoria’s health system – delivering faster patient care, supporting staff in busy emergency departments, and getting paramedics back on the road sooner.
Minister for Health Mary-Anne Thomas today announced the Standards for Safe and Timely Ambulance and Emergency Care for Victorians will be rolled out across all emergency departments in 2025 to support the faster handover of patients arriving via ambulance.
The new standards were developed following extensive consultation with clinicians, health services, Ambulance Victoria, unions, peak bodies and Safer Care Victoria, 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.
The standards are focused on ensuring patients can get world-class care faster and closer to home, through measures including re-direction to alternative care settings, enhanced patient transfer procedures, more timely inpatient admissions and early discharges.
The standards are based on how staff work at the Austin Hospital. As a statewide leader, the health service has successfully and consistently improved emergency department 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 emergency department’s waiting room.
Importantly, the hardworking doctors, nurses and paramedics take a collective objective of ‘getting ambulances back into the community’.
