Tamworth ambulance: New England paramedics beg city to end nuisance triple zero calls

It's just one of the fake emergencies soaking up thousands of hours of time and driving local paramedics to wits' end.

From itchy feet to a minor dog bite injury, to broken bones, trivial nuisance non-emergency calls to triple zero are constantly dragging the city's front-line health workers away from genuine health crises.

Inspector Paul McRae estimates an ambulance somewhere in the region responds to a non-emergency or trivial callout about once a day.

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"[On Tuesday] one of our sister paramedic crews responded to a woman who's had insomnia for the last five years. Took our crews 30-odd minutes to arrive there, assess the patient, and find out that her concern was about a chronic ongoing problem, not an emergency," he said.

"These are the sort of ridiculous calls we're forced to respond to."

The rate of trivial and even occasionally malicious calls to triple zero by Tamworth residents isn't out of the ordinary in NSW. Statewide the problem is growing to become such a crisis the service recently started a campaign to stem the tide.

But in a rural area, where distances stretch further, the potential for time to be wasted responding to an unnecessary job is much greater.

"I think it's a big problem everywhere. It certainly takes our crews away for longer periods of time out of cycle. [Treatment] time might be less than an hour, but here you've got to travel distances to get to the location then, unfortunately, we get held up at our MDs with access block because our health system is under pressure. Our cycle times can be quite high," Inspector McRae said.

The additional workload is contributing to the larger problem of reliance on overtime by the local ambulance system.

Inspector McRae said in 39 years in paramedicine he's never known the service to be as overworked, he said.

"Our paramedics at the moment are quite exhausted. They feel quite frustrated that their expertise and their time is spent responding to low acuity cases that can be managed by individuals themselves without anybody else," he said.

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Paramedics told the Leader they had recently worked lengthy night shifts this week to cover for another crew called away to nonsense jobs. Others said they had worked 76 hours in four days. And a majority of their jobs are "low acuity", non-emergencies that did not require an ambulance, a Tamworth paramedic said.

They were quick to emphasise that being taken by an ambulance to hospital doesn't mean you'll be seen faster, because patients still have to go through triage after admission.

In the 12 months to March 31 this year, NSW Ambulance responded to more than 200,000 jobs where no patient was taken to hospital with reasons ranging from hoax calls to refusal of transport.

People with lower level health problems should call Health Direct on 1800 011 511, talk to their local GP, or take a taxi to hospital.

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