The elite "Order of St Johns" received $223 million in the 2010-2011 financial year, 80 per cent of it coming from the Ministry of Health and ACC.
Their annual operating loss has risen from $8 million five years ago, with an increasing number of elderly people needing transport producing a 4.5 per cent rise in demand. This equates to a $15 million annual loss.
This budget blowout has forced St John's to review its services and one of the plans is to direct non-urgent calls to a GP or other health care providers or to send a staff member in a car and not an ambulance. The Non Medical Emergency calls make up to 15 per cent of all emergency calls and not all of them needed to go to hospital.
This is something that we at Supercare4u.com have been preaching for 3 years. You don't need an emergency ambulance to transfer a client for a non medical emergency. There are more effective methods to do this.
