Protest at Austin Hosp to save MICA units

MICA paramedics will protest outside the Austin Hospital today, demanding the State Government withdraw plans to close MICA units at Ivanhoe, Bundoora and Box Hill and replace them with Single Responder Units.

Ambulance Employees Australia State Secretary Steve McGhie said local opposition to the MICA closures is spreading. He called on Health Minister Daniel Andrews to withdraw his controversial restructure plans.

In April this year Premier Brumby announced plans to close nine of Melbourne’s Mobile Intensive Care Ambulance Service units and replace them with Single Responder Units.

Highly trained MICA paramedics treat the city's most complex and demanding cases, such as shootings, stabbings and road trauma victims.

MICA paramedics say Single Responder Units cannot perform critical life-saving procedures like rapid sequence intubation, where patients are placed in induced comas and a tube is placed down their throat.

Eleven of Melbourne’s 16 MICA units are set to either have their operating time halved to 12 hours a day or become a "Single Responder Unit," staffed by one paramedic in a passenger vehicle.

MICA units in Brunswick, Prahran, Ivanhoe, Box Hill, Frankston, Dandenong, Laverton North, Ringwood and Bundoora will be replaced with single responder units. MICA units in Clayton and Footscray will become "peak period" units, operating only in the busiest 12 hours of the day.

Plans to replace the Frankston MICA have been met with a storm of community opposition. A local doctor Dr Prakash Nayagam argued in the Frankston Leader the move will be "detrimental” to the “quality care of seriously and critically ill patients” in the area.

McGhie said the proposed restructure will undermine clinical care and compound the staffing crisis inside MICA.

“These changes undermine clinical care. They are bad for the ambulance service and our community.”

“They are no solution to the MICA staffing crisis. Morale will go backwards even further. More MICA paramedics will leave.

“The key to attracting and retaining MICA paramedics, and all paramedics, is 10 hour rest breaks between shifts, better rosters and fair wages.”

WHERE: Front Entrance Austin Hospital, Studley Rd Heidelberg (opposite Heidelberg Station).

WHEN: 2pm Wednesday 3 September, 2008