A man has died in southern Sydney after an ambulance took more than half an hour to arrive after his family called triple zero, sparking calls for an independent investigation into the tragedy.
NSW Ambulance is now undertaking a high-level investigation into the 70-year-old man's death, at Hurstville in Sydney's south, earlier this month and has temporarily removed a control centre staff member from duties involving patient contact.
The man's death comes during a period of high demand for the ambulance service.
The ambulance union says a shortage of paramedics and delays in hospitals are leaving Sydney dangerously exposed.
However, the service says in this case, resource shortages did not contribute to the delay.
Health Services Union councillor and paramedic Greg Bruce said he was aware of another case just last week in which a pedestrian was hit by a car on the northern beaches and it took nearly half an hour before the necessary ambulance crew was able to get to the site to transfer the person to Royal North Shore Hospital.
"We are just struggling to get cars to these jobs," he said. "No ambulance service in the world works at the 80 per cent utilisation rate we currently have."
He said most officers were not being given breaks on shifts, and though delays at overcrowded hospitals were part of the problem, the numbers of paramedics on the staff had not adequately increased to keep up with the numbers of calls received.
Labor health spokesman Walt Secord said Health Minister Jillian Skinner must urgently refer the death to the Health Care Complaints Commission.
"The last thing we want to see is the government investigating itself; the ambulance service investigating the ambulance service," he said. "As each day goes by, there is a new report of the Ambulance Service of NSW being under enormous pressure and seems to be sliding from crisis to crisis."
Mr Secord said incidents such as those revealed by Fairfax Media, where hospitals too full to admit new patients had led to massive blockages throughout the ambulance system, were causing the community to lose confidence in the health system.
Health Services Union secretary Gerard Hayes said it was a concern that in a metropolitan area it would take half an hour to get a vehicle to an ill patient, and any investigation should examine where the car sent to him had come from.
He said the service was so busy filling gaps in ambulances it was "moving pieces on a chessboard".
"The government talks about building extra stations … but ambulance might start in the north but be very quickly moved to the city or western Sydney, and then there's no one left in the stations," he said.
A NSW Ambulance spokeswoman said it extended "its sincere condolences to the family for any distress caused by our response" on the night of the incident.
But she said resource availability did not contribute to the delay in getting paramedics to the man, and a control centre staff member had been removed from patient-contact duties until the review was completed.
"NSW Ambulance is conducting a comprehensive root cause analysis (RCA) investigation into the response," she said. "An RCA investigates the systemic causes of a reportable incident and makes recommendations to improve future patient outcomes. It is the highest level of review conducted by NSW Ambulance."
Acting Health Minister Pru Goward extended her sympathy to the loved ones of the man who had died.
"NSW Ambulance will fully investigate the circumstances surrounding its response to this incident," she said.
Premier Mike Baird has called for a raising of the GST rate to 15 per cent to boost the health budget.
