GPs may replace ambulance

Non-emergency ambulance calls in Christchurch will be forwarded to a GP or responded to by a sole paramedic in a car to help cope with the organisation's rising national operating costs.

St John has recorded a record $15 million-a-year loss.

Officials say between 10 and 15 per cent of all Christchurch ambulance 111 notifications are non-urgent call outs.

This is putting a strain on ambulance resources in both Christchurch and other parts of the country.

Ambulance bosses have warned that St John's annual operating loss is unsustainable after nearly doubling from $8 million in five years.

Last year, the ambulance service received a record 337,000 emergency callouts.

"A lot of people don't need to be transported to hospital," St John's operations manager Michael Brooke said.

"That's a massive part of our workload. If we can reduce that, we can concentrate on getting to the life-threatening calls quicker."

St John communications operations manager Alan Goudge said more than 1000 calls were received daily.

While Telecom vetted out the more "malicious" calls, the rest were "triaged" to determine the appropriate response.

"We get a range of calls from people that in effect have a view that - dare I say it - an ambulance can sometimes be equated to a taxi."

Ambulances had responded to a 111 call about a "severed finger hanging on by a thread" only to find on arrival the injury needed a mere sticking plaster, Mr Goudge said.

St John's priority system has been changed from a priority one, priority two, priority three system to a new five coloured coding system - purple, red, orange, green and grey.

A call classified as 'grey' could range from a toothache to a grazed knee, Mr Goudge said.

"A very amusing call was when a young lad - seven-years-old - had rung us up to say that his dad was getting old, and that he was going to die.

"He was deadly serious at the time, he thought that his dad was getting old and that he was going to die. This was troubling him and so he rang 111 and asked for an ambulance."

The call handler kept the child on the phone until an adult was available - his mother was in the bathroom.

"We had a bit of a chuckle about it and actually we've provided the mother with a recording of the call and I think their intention is to play it for this lad on his eighteenth birthday."

Other examples of 'grey' calls include elderly who were feeling vulnerable.

"In our business you've always got to err on the side of caution."