00:02In the middle of the night, a nine-year-old girl in Palmerston suffering an asthma attack
00:06made to wait nearly two hours before receiving care.
00:10Just one of several life-threatening cases left waiting during the ambulance's code white
00:15last Friday night.
00:16You know, patients will do one of three things.
00:18They'll get better, they'll get worse, or they'll stay the same.
00:20We need to make sure that we're checking on them and making sure that they haven't gotten
00:24worse.
00:24And thankfully, I think it's just sheer luck that that hasn't happened.
00:28It's the third week in a row St John NT have reached a point of critical system failure.
00:34We are putting on immediate relief at the moment, so we will call in additional crews.
00:39But unfortunately that's placing the pressure onto our already overworked staff, that we're
00:45relying on the goodwill of our staff to come in and to perform overtime.
00:51The ongoing crisis of resourcing comes amid timely contract negotiations between St John
00:56NT and the Northern Territory Government.
00:58The last contract between the two organisations was signed in 2016 and expired in 2021.
01:05Since then, the terms of that agreement have been extended year after year, leading to a
01:09significant funding shortfall.
01:12Given its small population, the NT Ambulance Services funding equates to about $237 per
01:18territorial, a little more than most jurisdictions and significantly less than others.
01:23However, we also have the most demanding population when it comes to medical emergencies, with the
01:28incident rate drastically increasing over the past seven years.
01:32The Health Minister tight-lipped on specific measures for financial support, but says he wants
01:37the contract sorted within the next eight months.
01:39We hope to have a contract in place by the end of this year, and we're going to continue
01:44working with St John's to get a very clear picture of what those demand issues are, so
01:49that we can have a fully resourced St John, because this affects all of the families right
01:55across the Northern Territory.
01:57With a new code white every week, a new deal can't come soon enough.
Comments