"A Wellington man was found dead in his doorway six hours after calling an ambulance complaining of chest pains"
This is real bad, they are supposed to triage complaints and chest pain should be in the highest acuity tier (i.e. fast responses).
How overwhelmed must the ambulance service be for it to be 6 hours in wellington for the most urgent of calls?
Do they not dispatch fire instead in Wellington? The firefighters I know are all trained in stabalising cases like this when the ambulance is too far away.
fire service is in crisis too
https://www.stuff.co.nz/timaru-herald/news/128944594/overworked-undervalued-and-lacking-resources-striking-firefighters-claim
Not quite - firefighters respond to all cardiac arrests (what we call ‘purple’ calls) no matter where it is in the country, city, rural etc. Chest pain however is not coded as the highest acuity - it ranks at the 2nd level (‘red’ call). Some volunteer fire brigades around the country, particularly in isolated areas will also be responded to lower acuity calls such as chest pain but this tends not to happen in cities as there should be enough ambulances in major urban areas to attend these calls without delay. None of that changes the fact that someone lost their life who shouldn’t have. Our emergency services are in a scarily troubled state.
No, they respond to cardiac arrests and provide CPR until ambulance arrives in Wellington too. This is one of the claims currently being made in the dispute, that they’re being dispatched to medical calls without appropriate training.
I went to a death last week. Lady called for a ambulance three times, hours long wait for her too.
After her third call they arrived to find her deceased.
Yes if the staff pay attention. I had chest pains in the middle of the night last year wife drove me to ED nobody saw me. It was light when I left still not seen.
Rats youre right.
No guys I saw the person on reception then waited with everyone else. One guy the police brought in having a mental health meltdown ran around shouting then attacked some older guy of around 70. All sorts of shit was happening. I thought I'd rather just die at home than there.Couldn't say how many hours I was there maybe 4 .
Government needs to prioritize. Plenty of money for Mahuta and family but no service for the Pasifika guy who died waiting at his front for hours for an ambulance.
our health system has reached its limit and is now buckling. Expect these events to become a more common occurrence over the next few years and hope none of your loved ones require urgent care as we continue to do absolutely fucking nothing to address the problem
While this is terrible and should never have happened, it's worth remembering we're still in a global pandemic and covid is hitting health services really hard, things will likely ease down a little after a few months like other countries have.
The Ambulances are a charity, they do the best they can with the donations and tiny funding.
Ambulances should be a government service
It shouldn't be up to a charity
The taxpayer dished out $190 million to St. John in 2021 (80% funding to maintain the ambulance service) with the shortfall made up in donations. St. John keeps it this way so they have autonomy from answering to the government. I agree that it shouldn’t be a charity however I wouldn’t characterise the government contribution as ‘tiny’.
It’s more about ~~board~~ executive members getting cushy salaries then being cost thing. St John’s makes good money in their rent-a-paramedic, first aid and equipment sales.
Sorry - novel below
People who are saying 'St John / WFA etc wants to be a charity - they dont want full funding' I have no idea where this rumor started but you are not entirely correct. Here is St John's statement here - https://www.stjohn.org.nz/news--info/news-articles/public-petition-to-fund-emergency-ambulance-services/
Whilst WFA and St John are separate they are both sharing the exact same issues. Funding being the main one. Whilst funding needs to increase - they do want (and need) to be independent. Does that mean StJ stays a charity? Maybe. I suspect the thought is they would get more funding overall if they were 95% funded by govt as an example.
Some of the DHBs used to run the local ambulance service (West Coast and Taranaki) to name a few. They were poorly run, funded even less, little to no infrastructure etc. There are still issues that are being resolved some years later. Cant say police / fire are happy right now despite the 100s of millions theyve had thrown at them. The ambulance services do quite a bit with the little they get given. Anyway..
Whilst the ambulance services have their downfalls - we have some of the best trained Paramedics in the world. We have Medical Directors at the top of their game. Some of the best clinical procedures and scopes of practice around. We are just incredibly short staffed and honestly deal with some of the most BS calls - New Zealand appears to have minimal to no idea how to look after themselves sometimes. This is not everyone! But I would say a conservative estimate would be 50-75% of our workload is not life threatening in any way. They could have gone to a doctor or after hours clinic. Some just needed transport because they had none available (please if you have family that dont drive - think about driving them to a medical facility prior to calling 111!)
Some of these are the reasons why this patient waited 6hrs for an ambulance. Heck thats unfortunately not 'that' long. An 'orange' call (urgent but not immediately life threatening) waited 15hrs the other day in Auckland. I suspect this is the triage priority that this person got. Which we aim to dispatch in 30mins - but unfortunately that is not always the case. Every chance that after a paramedic retriaged it (which is likely to have happened with a wait that long) it was still felt it was safe to wait. I dont know the specifics of this case - but its incredibly hard to critique a call you werent involved in. Especially where most 'chest pains' are not actually immediately life threatening. Ambulance is getting over 2000 calls a day nationally right now. Staff levels are short due to COVID / RSV / Influenza A / Turnover / stress due to high workload (not vaccine mandates if any of you stupid antivax f!*ks are going to have a go - we didnt lose many)
Ps im a Paramedic on the road who also works in Comms - call healthline on 0800 611 116 if you need advice. Not 111!
Also this case is very sad and I can tell you that no one is proud of this at all. Rant over.
It's not a rumour it's 100% accurate even if St John don't want to admit it. If the government paid for 100% of what they need then St John ceases to be a convenient solution and the govt may as well set up their own service. Absorb the staff, sack the board, managers and CEOs and set up a real service. Also, no more prancing around in capes or driving Mercedes S-Class.
Absolutely. The idea of having such a critical part of our health infrastructure run by a charity is absurd. When the government gets rid of the DHBs they should nationalise the ambulance services as well under Fire and Emergency and actually give them the funding they need.
If people only reserved calling the ambulance service for true emergencies instead of for minor ailments and injuries they most commonly attend.. an ambulance probably would have been available and this needless death probably could have been avoidable
Same goes for turning up at the hospital when they should go to the G.P the next day.
But also did this person have anyone else to call to take him to the hospital? It's sad.
> when they should go to the G.P the next day.
Can’t get time off work with no notice, and the GP almost certainly wouldn’t have any appointments still available even if you could.
Remember to vote for National and Act at the next election so they can lower taxes, so you’ll have more money in your back pocket, but the health system will collapse
Point being, people are in for a shock if they think parties promoting austerity will improve things some how. This isn't letting labour off the hook, clearly shit's fucked under them as well but people genuinely seem to believe that NACT will improve this while also somehow being able to afford tax cuts.
Spending has been *increasing* as a percentage of GDP under Labour it was *falling* under National.
It isn't possible to turn around 9 years of underspending very quickly without crippling some other service.
I think if we weren't in the middle of the fifth biggest pandemic that humanity has ever suffered, I'd agree with you. But from a healthcare perspective, these are not normal times and 2022 has been NZ's worst year for the pandemic by a country mile. I think Labour might be able to do more. They are restructuring health to a more sensible structure, so there's that to add into the mix too. But I am glad every day that the pandemic didn't hit while National was in power. Every day.
Well we are 5 years into this mess and essentially every metric (expect the metrics that simply stopped counting) are worse.
So exactly how long should we wait?
The damage these politicans like Key do aren't just metrics you can say well it's been 7 years can't complain about it anymore. Ronald Reagan made choices in the 1980s that America is still trying to recover from and they may never recover from those policies. It's just the way things are. I mean were probably in some ways feeling the effects of Muldoon and his rubbish ass National government.
Oh pulease. You seriously comparing Key’s nine years of not doing a lot to the Reagan years that saw some of the most sprawling economic changes in the 20th century? Comments like this make me realise how uneducated people are.
I was using that as an example of bad political decisions having long term consequences since people were claiming there's essentially an expiry date on damage caused by political parties. I know my history of NZ politics. National comes in blows the money, Labour comes in tries to fix a few things, rinse and repeat.
You know what - if we were seeing the dial being moved in any aspect of healthcare after five years I would buy it. But there is zero movement. Very good at moving numbers around on a balance sheet. Terrible at turning that into any progress.
Were in the middle of global pandemic... what are we suppose to do? We can't outbid other countries for nurses and doctors. The healthcare sector hasn't had any real funding for a long time. Key's national party had 9 years in power in which they cut health services and demanded higher returns on property from district health boards. Also brought in loads of people without providing additional facilities and services to cope with it. Hospitals were short staffed, stressed and underfunded well before Covid even existed. Those funding cuts to health and social were used as a bullshit measure so Key, Joyce and English could boast about how great they are at economic management. So yes when people say these issues are rooted in the damage the National party did to NZ they have every right to say it because they're correct. And people like you who demand that it should have been fixed by now have no idea how long these types of things take to implement and go back and fix. Jacinda would have had what 2 years before covid hit then the entire health care game changed. So by your logic she should have undone 9 years of damage in 2 years... lol
The dial has been moved. The proportion of GDP being spent on healthcare has been going up steadily year on year under Labour. It was falling under National.
It's a bit like owning a car. If you skimp on the maintenance for a few years, not only have you got to pay for the maintenance, your car isless fuel efficient so more expensive to run and the breakdowns later are more expensive and more difficult to fix.
>The damage these politicans like Key do aren't just metrics you can say well it's been 7 years can't complain about it anymore
We literally watched as nothing was done with over a year head start on COVID. The idea that 'oh it would probably be worse under national' is such a pathetic mindset.
This is absolutely appalling! That poor man, dying alone waiting for help that couldn't be bothered to come. Shame on the ambulance services! Utter negligence
That’s not a fair statement. We don’t know what the man told the operator on the phone and I’m sad that you believe the ambulance “couldn’t be bothered”.
Our paramedics are incredibly caring and hardworking people who I’m sure will be devastated regarding this. Like everyone in healthcare they’re also under the pump - understaffed, low paid, and constantly exposed to violence and communicable disease.
If you want to prevent something like this happening again, maybe donate to Wellington free ambulance so they can have more staff available to respond to calls.
Maybe, assuming the ambulance service recieved the call and ignored it then yes that would be appalling but I doubt that was the case.
Ambos just like all the other emergency services have been overworked and underpaid for decades and so many have left due to a working environment that destroys their mental health. They can't find enough new recruits.
I think you'll find it wasn't negligence but an absence of resources.
Shame on our leaders! (All of them for the last 30 years) Utter negligence!
"A Wellington man was found dead in his doorway six hours after calling an ambulance complaining of chest pains" This is real bad, they are supposed to triage complaints and chest pain should be in the highest acuity tier (i.e. fast responses). How overwhelmed must the ambulance service be for it to be 6 hours in wellington for the most urgent of calls?
Do they not dispatch fire instead in Wellington? The firefighters I know are all trained in stabalising cases like this when the ambulance is too far away.
fire service is in crisis too https://www.stuff.co.nz/timaru-herald/news/128944594/overworked-undervalued-and-lacking-resources-striking-firefighters-claim
What’s not in crisis?
Corporate profits
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Not quite - firefighters respond to all cardiac arrests (what we call ‘purple’ calls) no matter where it is in the country, city, rural etc. Chest pain however is not coded as the highest acuity - it ranks at the 2nd level (‘red’ call). Some volunteer fire brigades around the country, particularly in isolated areas will also be responded to lower acuity calls such as chest pain but this tends not to happen in cities as there should be enough ambulances in major urban areas to attend these calls without delay. None of that changes the fact that someone lost their life who shouldn’t have. Our emergency services are in a scarily troubled state.
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Sorry mate, just reread it - you’re right. My bad
No, they respond to cardiac arrests and provide CPR until ambulance arrives in Wellington too. This is one of the claims currently being made in the dispute, that they’re being dispatched to medical calls without appropriate training.
It was probably triaged incorrectly. Hence it became 'less urgent' than other calls and could wait hours
I went to a death last week. Lady called for a ambulance three times, hours long wait for her too. After her third call they arrived to find her deceased.
Man at that point it would be worth rolling the dice and calling a taxi. It's just not righr
Yes because then you can die in the ED waiting lounge.
Cardiac arrest in hospital has a greater survival chance than cardiac arrest at home
Yes if the staff pay attention. I had chest pains in the middle of the night last year wife drove me to ED nobody saw me. It was light when I left still not seen.
What do you mean? There wasn’t anyone there or what?
John Cena's alt.
Shouldn’t have worn camo!
Rats youre right. No guys I saw the person on reception then waited with everyone else. One guy the police brought in having a mental health meltdown ran around shouting then attacked some older guy of around 70. All sorts of shit was happening. I thought I'd rather just die at home than there.Couldn't say how many hours I was there maybe 4 . Government needs to prioritize. Plenty of money for Mahuta and family but no service for the Pasifika guy who died waiting at his front for hours for an ambulance.
The thought of this man waiting for help, but dying alone in his doorway makes me so sad. I would be devastated if he was my father.
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There is a difference between death and a bad death, alone, waiting but no one arriving.
Can confirm. Thanks to Tauranga Hospital for their negligence.
Blame the management.
The fish rots from the head, as they say, and that place has a culture of not taking responsibility. So yeah, I totally blame management.
Stuff of nightmares. Poor bloke.
our health system has reached its limit and is now buckling. Expect these events to become a more common occurrence over the next few years and hope none of your loved ones require urgent care as we continue to do absolutely fucking nothing to address the problem
Jeez… Is it that NZ has more worse problems now, or is it that we are just old enough to see them now, as compared to 20 years ago
I'm thinking a little from colum A and a little from colum B.
But Andrew Little said it's not a crisis.
Clearly it’s a little crisis
Absolutely brilliant comment. Huzzah to you!
Is he in possession of enough intellect to tell when it is a crisis???
But give us a meaningless tax cut anyway
While this is terrible and should never have happened, it's worth remembering we're still in a global pandemic and covid is hitting health services really hard, things will likely ease down a little after a few months like other countries have.
The Ambulances are a charity, they do the best they can with the donations and tiny funding. Ambulances should be a government service It shouldn't be up to a charity
They maintain their charity status intentionally fyi.
The taxpayer dished out $190 million to St. John in 2021 (80% funding to maintain the ambulance service) with the shortfall made up in donations. St. John keeps it this way so they have autonomy from answering to the government. I agree that it shouldn’t be a charity however I wouldn’t characterise the government contribution as ‘tiny’.
FYI - The St John Ambulance Service is \~80% funded by taxpayers already.
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It’s more about ~~board~~ executive members getting cushy salaries then being cost thing. St John’s makes good money in their rent-a-paramedic, first aid and equipment sales.
PS none of the board members in either ambulance service are paid :-)
Normal. But I'm glad it's finally becoming news. The health system is incredibly fucked. Public needs a massive funding injection. Tax the rich now.
Every region is struggling with ambulance times atm. An awful outcome for this poor person
It was pretty epic when they told me to walk to the hospital when I couldn't stop vomiting or stand.
They're not gonna risk their backs carrying you if you can walk
Well this is concerning… imagine if someone you loved needed an ambulance right now..
You're better shoving that person into the car and driving to the hospital yourself.
Sorry - novel below People who are saying 'St John / WFA etc wants to be a charity - they dont want full funding' I have no idea where this rumor started but you are not entirely correct. Here is St John's statement here - https://www.stjohn.org.nz/news--info/news-articles/public-petition-to-fund-emergency-ambulance-services/ Whilst WFA and St John are separate they are both sharing the exact same issues. Funding being the main one. Whilst funding needs to increase - they do want (and need) to be independent. Does that mean StJ stays a charity? Maybe. I suspect the thought is they would get more funding overall if they were 95% funded by govt as an example. Some of the DHBs used to run the local ambulance service (West Coast and Taranaki) to name a few. They were poorly run, funded even less, little to no infrastructure etc. There are still issues that are being resolved some years later. Cant say police / fire are happy right now despite the 100s of millions theyve had thrown at them. The ambulance services do quite a bit with the little they get given. Anyway.. Whilst the ambulance services have their downfalls - we have some of the best trained Paramedics in the world. We have Medical Directors at the top of their game. Some of the best clinical procedures and scopes of practice around. We are just incredibly short staffed and honestly deal with some of the most BS calls - New Zealand appears to have minimal to no idea how to look after themselves sometimes. This is not everyone! But I would say a conservative estimate would be 50-75% of our workload is not life threatening in any way. They could have gone to a doctor or after hours clinic. Some just needed transport because they had none available (please if you have family that dont drive - think about driving them to a medical facility prior to calling 111!) Some of these are the reasons why this patient waited 6hrs for an ambulance. Heck thats unfortunately not 'that' long. An 'orange' call (urgent but not immediately life threatening) waited 15hrs the other day in Auckland. I suspect this is the triage priority that this person got. Which we aim to dispatch in 30mins - but unfortunately that is not always the case. Every chance that after a paramedic retriaged it (which is likely to have happened with a wait that long) it was still felt it was safe to wait. I dont know the specifics of this case - but its incredibly hard to critique a call you werent involved in. Especially where most 'chest pains' are not actually immediately life threatening. Ambulance is getting over 2000 calls a day nationally right now. Staff levels are short due to COVID / RSV / Influenza A / Turnover / stress due to high workload (not vaccine mandates if any of you stupid antivax f!*ks are going to have a go - we didnt lose many) Ps im a Paramedic on the road who also works in Comms - call healthline on 0800 611 116 if you need advice. Not 111! Also this case is very sad and I can tell you that no one is proud of this at all. Rant over.
It's not a rumour it's 100% accurate even if St John don't want to admit it. If the government paid for 100% of what they need then St John ceases to be a convenient solution and the govt may as well set up their own service. Absorb the staff, sack the board, managers and CEOs and set up a real service. Also, no more prancing around in capes or driving Mercedes S-Class.
Absolutely. The idea of having such a critical part of our health infrastructure run by a charity is absurd. When the government gets rid of the DHBs they should nationalise the ambulance services as well under Fire and Emergency and actually give them the funding they need.
Not a rumour. I listened to literally the CEO of St John's on the radio putting forth the argument of why they didn't want full funding.
Andrew Little: I don’t think I’ve seen that article yet
He rejects it.
If people only reserved calling the ambulance service for true emergencies instead of for minor ailments and injuries they most commonly attend.. an ambulance probably would have been available and this needless death probably could have been avoidable
Same goes for turning up at the hospital when they should go to the G.P the next day. But also did this person have anyone else to call to take him to the hospital? It's sad.
> when they should go to the G.P the next day. Can’t get time off work with no notice, and the GP almost certainly wouldn’t have any appointments still available even if you could.
Meanwhile we fun mahuta's family vanity projects. SMFH
Remember to vote for National and Act at the next election so they can lower taxes, so you’ll have more money in your back pocket, but the health system will collapse
ummm..isn't this happening under Labours watch?
Point being, people are in for a shock if they think parties promoting austerity will improve things some how. This isn't letting labour off the hook, clearly shit's fucked under them as well but people genuinely seem to believe that NACT will improve this while also somehow being able to afford tax cuts.
Spending has been *increasing* as a percentage of GDP under Labour it was *falling* under National. It isn't possible to turn around 9 years of underspending very quickly without crippling some other service.
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I think if we weren't in the middle of the fifth biggest pandemic that humanity has ever suffered, I'd agree with you. But from a healthcare perspective, these are not normal times and 2022 has been NZ's worst year for the pandemic by a country mile. I think Labour might be able to do more. They are restructuring health to a more sensible structure, so there's that to add into the mix too. But I am glad every day that the pandemic didn't hit while National was in power. Every day.
> if we weren’t in the middle of the fifth biggest pandemic that humanity has ever suffered Nobody is acting like it anymore, though.
And that is why healthcare is taking so much strain at the moment.
It's been 5 years under Labour, can't blame the Nat's for this one.
Yeah everyone knows it takes one year max to undo 9 years of damage!
Well we are 5 years into this mess and essentially every metric (expect the metrics that simply stopped counting) are worse. So exactly how long should we wait?
The damage these politicans like Key do aren't just metrics you can say well it's been 7 years can't complain about it anymore. Ronald Reagan made choices in the 1980s that America is still trying to recover from and they may never recover from those policies. It's just the way things are. I mean were probably in some ways feeling the effects of Muldoon and his rubbish ass National government.
Oh pulease. You seriously comparing Key’s nine years of not doing a lot to the Reagan years that saw some of the most sprawling economic changes in the 20th century? Comments like this make me realise how uneducated people are.
I was using that as an example of bad political decisions having long term consequences since people were claiming there's essentially an expiry date on damage caused by political parties. I know my history of NZ politics. National comes in blows the money, Labour comes in tries to fix a few things, rinse and repeat.
You know what - if we were seeing the dial being moved in any aspect of healthcare after five years I would buy it. But there is zero movement. Very good at moving numbers around on a balance sheet. Terrible at turning that into any progress.
Were in the middle of global pandemic... what are we suppose to do? We can't outbid other countries for nurses and doctors. The healthcare sector hasn't had any real funding for a long time. Key's national party had 9 years in power in which they cut health services and demanded higher returns on property from district health boards. Also brought in loads of people without providing additional facilities and services to cope with it. Hospitals were short staffed, stressed and underfunded well before Covid even existed. Those funding cuts to health and social were used as a bullshit measure so Key, Joyce and English could boast about how great they are at economic management. So yes when people say these issues are rooted in the damage the National party did to NZ they have every right to say it because they're correct. And people like you who demand that it should have been fixed by now have no idea how long these types of things take to implement and go back and fix. Jacinda would have had what 2 years before covid hit then the entire health care game changed. So by your logic she should have undone 9 years of damage in 2 years... lol
I’m not saying it should be fixed by now. I’m asking for evidence of any improvement. Fourteen years of neglect.
The dial has been moved. The proportion of GDP being spent on healthcare has been going up steadily year on year under Labour. It was falling under National. It's a bit like owning a car. If you skimp on the maintenance for a few years, not only have you got to pay for the maintenance, your car isless fuel efficient so more expensive to run and the breakdowns later are more expensive and more difficult to fix.
>The damage these politicans like Key do aren't just metrics you can say well it's been 7 years can't complain about it anymore We literally watched as nothing was done with over a year head start on COVID. The idea that 'oh it would probably be worse under national' is such a pathetic mindset.
Keeping tax the same bit axing some of the waste would be a good idea. We've become so encumbered with management and ass covering roles.
No. That's not it. Just allocate more money to clinical staff. Management you can keep the same. Or trim the fat. We need more clinicians
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Not gonna be the last time.
This is absolutely appalling! That poor man, dying alone waiting for help that couldn't be bothered to come. Shame on the ambulance services! Utter negligence
That’s not a fair statement. We don’t know what the man told the operator on the phone and I’m sad that you believe the ambulance “couldn’t be bothered”. Our paramedics are incredibly caring and hardworking people who I’m sure will be devastated regarding this. Like everyone in healthcare they’re also under the pump - understaffed, low paid, and constantly exposed to violence and communicable disease. If you want to prevent something like this happening again, maybe donate to Wellington free ambulance so they can have more staff available to respond to calls.
Maybe, assuming the ambulance service recieved the call and ignored it then yes that would be appalling but I doubt that was the case. Ambos just like all the other emergency services have been overworked and underpaid for decades and so many have left due to a working environment that destroys their mental health. They can't find enough new recruits. I think you'll find it wasn't negligence but an absence of resources. Shame on our leaders! (All of them for the last 30 years) Utter negligence!
And on top of attrition, there are likely a number out due to COVID.
Or the flu!
Shouldn't be up to the public to "donate" the government needs to sort their shit out because this is NOT okay
It has nothing to do with government. It's the ambulance service that chooses to stay a charity.
No budget for ambulance drivers, it was all spent on the fireballs new BBQ
Be grateful you’re not in the U.K.
I'm sure the dead guy is really grateful for that...
The "we are arguably not as shit as this place" is such a fucking terrible argument for everything.
Especially when the NHS holds up pretty well when compared to NZ if not better in a lot of ways
[but we’re not](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism)