Report on Government Services 2021

Ambulance services include preparing for, providing and enhancing:

• emergency and non-emergency pre-hospital and out-of-hospital patient care and transport
• inter-hospital patient transport including the movement of critical patients
• specialised rescue services
• the ambulance component of multi-casualty events
• the community’s capacity to respond to emergencies.

Ambulance service organisations are the primary agencies involved in providing services for ambulance events. State and Territory governments provide ambulance services in most jurisdictions. In WA and the NT, St John Ambulance is under contract to the respective governments as the primary provider of ambulance services.

On 1 December 2018, paramedicine became a nationally regulated profession with paramedics joining the National Registration and Accreditation Scheme (Paramedics Australasia, 2021). From this date, paramedics must be registered with the Paramedicine Board of Australia and meet the Board’s registration standards in order to practise in Australia (Paramedicine Board of Australia, 2018).

Total expenditure on ambulance services was $4.2 billion in 2019-20 (table 11A.10), which was funded from a mix of revenue sources. Total revenue of ambulance service organisations was $4.1 billion in 2019-20, representing an annual average growth rate of 8.0 per cent since 2014-15 (table 11.1).

Jurisdictions have different funding models to provide resourcing to ambulance service organisations. Nationally in 2019-20, State and Territory government grants and indirect government funding formed the greatest source of ambulance service organisations funding (74.4 per cent of total funding), followed by transport fees (from public hospitals, private citizens and insurance (20.3 per cent of total funding), and subscriptions and other income (5.3 per cent) (table 11A.1).

Human resources

Nationally in 2019-20, for ambulance services reported in this section there were:

• 19 778 FTE salaried personnel (82.0 per cent were ambulance operatives)
• 8346 volunteer personnel (90.1 per cent were ambulance operatives)
• 5662 paramedic community first responders. Community first responders are trained volunteers that provide an emergency response (with no transport capacity) and first aid care before ambulance arrival (table 11A.8).

Demand for ambulance services

Nationally in 2019-20, there were:

• 3.9 million incidents reported to ambulance service organisations¹ (154.3 incidents per 1000 people)
• 4.9 million responses where an ambulance was sent to an incident (193.8 responses per 1000 people). There can be multiple responses sent to a single incident. There can also be responses to incidents that do not have people requiring treatment and/or transport
• 1223 response locations (5066 first responder locations with an ambulance) and 4073 ambulance general transport and patient transport vehicles
• 3.7 million patients assessed, treated or transported by ambulance service organisations² (146.9 patients per 1000 people) (figure 11.1)
• 71 air ambulance aircraft available. There are air ambulance (also called aero-medical) services in all jurisdictions, although arrangements vary across jurisdictions (table 11A.2).

Ambulance service organisations prioritise incidents as:

• emergency — immediate response under lights and sirens required (code 1)
• urgent — undelayed response required without lights and sirens (code 2)
• non-emergency — non-urgent response required (codes 3, 4)
• casualty room attendance.

Nationally in 2019-20, 37.6 per cent of the 3.9 million incidents ambulance service organisations attended were prioritised as emergency incidents, followed by 35.7 per cent prioritised as urgent and 26.6 per cent prioritised as non-emergency (table 11A.2). There were 246 casualty room attendance incidents (all of which occurred in Queensland).

1. An incident is an event that resulted in a demand for ambulance services to respond. Locate Footnote 1 above
2. Patients are counted by the number of episodes. Patients may be the subject of more than one episode per year. Locate Footnote 2 above

Paramedics Australasia, 2020, https://paramedics.org/professional-standards (accessed 4 May 2020).

Paramedicine Board of Australia, 2018, Registration standards , https://www.paramedicineboard.gov.au/Registration.aspx (accessed 22 October 2019).