How we manage demand

How we manage major incidents and demand

Ambulance Victoria (AV) has a state-wide Emergency Response Plan to manage major incidents and minimise the impact to ambulance services.

We may implement our Emergency Response Plan for various events including:

• natural disasters such as bushfires or floods
• security incidents such as an active armed offender incident
• multi casualty motor vehicle accidents
• industrial emergencies
• complex responses
• increases in demand.

The plan includes an escalation process that details the steps we take during major incidents. This is to ensure we continue to provide the best care to the community, especially for people who need us most.

Our escalation process is an internal framework designed for AV and our partners. This page outlines some of the steps we take and the things you can do to help us.

Ambulance Victoria’s escalation process

We watch for major incidents and emerging risks, including increases in demand, that may impact our response.

This enables us to maintain readiness and act swiftly when required.

We start our escalation process when a major incident or increase in demand has the potential to impact or is impacting the availability of ambulances in the community.

We alert our people and partners of increases in community demand for our services. We communicate the steps we are taking to ensure we can continue delivering care to our sickest patients.

Escalation levels

We have three escalation levels to allow us to increase our response to major incidents:

• green
• orange
• red.

Green escalation

A green escalation indicates an incident has the potential to or is having a medium impact on our normal ambulance service.

We aim to reduce the impact by:

• Putting in place the support of a health commander.
• Using additional staff.
• Moving ambulance crews around to provide coverage for areas more in need.

Orange escalation

An orange escalation indicates an incident has the potential to or is having a major impact on our normal ambulance service.

We manage this impact by:

• Using the support of a health commander at local, regional and state levels
• Calling in additional staff
• Referring lower acuity patients to other appropriate services
• Working with other health services to optimise ambulance availability
• Reminding the community to save ambulances for emergencies.

Red escalation

A red escalation (sometimes known as a code red), is a sign that we are experiencing severe impact on normal operations due to a major incident or an extreme increase in demand.

Sometimes we might be aware that a major event like severe weather or a bushfire is coming. When this happens, we will declare a red escalation before the event occurs. This helps us to be prepared and start minimising the disruption this event might have on our operations.

We continue to implement the steps taken for green and orange escalations.

We will also be working hard behind the scenes with hospitals and Triple Zero Victoria to:

• free up emergency ambulances
• refer lower acuity patients to other services
• add patient transport services to our emergency response.

We alert the community so people are aware of the pressures we are experiencing and can make informed decisions about their health issue:

• Callers to Triple Zero (000) are alerted to the delays.
• Community information notices are made through AV’s social media accounts (Facebook and Instagram).
• In rare circumstances we may also issue a Community Warning through the VicEmergency app.

If you see a community information notice issued, you will know that we are prioritising our sickest patients first. You may experience a delay in an ambulance reaching you.

More information