Ambulance system incident not a failure, QAS says amid claims of late arrivals

Queensland Ambulance Services have said it is inaccurate to describe this week’s incident as a system failure, as politicians continue to clash over its impacts.

The QAS’ computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system was upgraded on Thursday, but resulted in staff having to manually relay important information to ambulances by radio.

Triple Zero calls were not impacted and QAS said it has not received any reports of adverse impacts to patients from the transition.

A QAS spokesperson said Queenslanders can be confident they will receive ambulance services if they call Triple Zero.

“Our systems are working as intended following the transition to our new CAD system,” they said.

“All Triple Zero calls are being answered and resources are being dispatched in a timely manner, with the most urgent cases prioritised.”

The possible impact on the system during the transition was anticipated and accounted for, the QAS spokesperson said.

“Business continuity processes were enacted during the transition … this included rostering additional staff and validating all incidents to ensure they received an appropriate response,” they said.

While there have been reports in the media of ambulances arriving significantly late or not arriving at all, health minister Tim Nicholls said this was completely untrue.

“There was an alternative system in the event that the changeover didn’t go exactly according to plan,” Nicholls said.

Nicholls said it was “absolutely disingenuous and really quite despicable” for the state opposition to claim services were impacted.

“We’re not aware of any reports that anyone has made that they’ve had to drive themselves because they were unable to get through to Triple Zero,” he said.

“Now, there might be people who called through and weren’t either a category one, two, or three. That might be the normal course of events, but certainly nothing as a result of the changeover in the system has led to that delay that I’m aware of.”

Nicholls said QAS staff are used to the manual system and it was regularly used during updates to the old system.

“It’s precisely because that old system was reaching end of life that the new system was brought in,” he said.

“Is it unfortunate that it didn’t go as smoothly as the QAS would have hoped? Of course it is. Was there a well thought through contingency in place? Yes, there was. Did the contingency work as it’s expected to? Yes.

“Were there any missed cases in the community? I’m advised not. Were any Triple Zero calls not answered? I’m advised not.

“All records have been checked, and any outstanding records from yesterday continue to be reviewed. But there are no instances of missed care being provided in the community that I’m aware of.”

However, the state opposition has maintained that the incident was more serious than is being communicated.

Opposition leader Steven Miles once again slammed the state government for the system failure on Saturday.

“We’re calling for a full investigation, a full review of what went wrong with the systems upgrade, why they weren’t able to roll back to the legacy system that was stable and working, and what they will put in place to ensure that this never happens again,” Miles said.

“The people talking to us say that they have never experienced a shutdown of the dispatch system like what occurred this week.

“[Premier] David Crisafulli once said that ambulances not arriving on time was incomprehensible in a modern Queensland, but it is precisely what we’ve seen this week under this.

“And yet the government and the ambulance service seems determined to not tell Queenslanders how many people waited for an ambulance, how many people never had, how many people were so sick and in such pain that they drove themselves to hospital rather than wait for an ambulance that.

“It’s about time the health minister came clean with Queenslanders about what really happened during the week with ambulance dispatches.”

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Dominique Tassell is a reporter at Brisbane Times.AdvertisementAdvertisement