Hatzolah to offer new service
THERE are few more stressful situations than when an elderly family member suffers a fall or other calamity that is classified as "not life threatening" and the wait for help becomes drawn-out.
THERE are few more stressful situations than when an elderly family member suffers a fall or other calamity that is classified as “not life threatening” and the wait for help becomes drawn-out.
But a move by Jewish first-response service Hatzolah is set to improve response times for these and similar scenarios.
Hatzolah will become a contractor for Ambulance Victoria in non-emergency call-outs, beginning in early 2019, Hatzolah’s project manager Daniel Lazar told The AJN.
With Ambulance Victoria overhauling its response model in 2016 to provide faster emergency responses by contracting out non-emergency call-outs, Hatzolah found it was timely to provide such a such a contracted service to the Jewish community, and has undergone the licensing requirements to do this, Lazar explained.
Ambulance Victoria’s new response philosophy has had a number of effects, said Lazar, such as non-emergency patient transport service patients no longer receiving a paramedic level of care and transport.
The new model has also meant that instead of the traditional 10, 20 or 30 minutes, “Hatzolah responders are sometimes sitting with patients two and three hours waiting for this third-party service to arrive, and as a result, our volunteers are getting burned out and exhausted”, he noted.
“If your bubba is lying on the floor with potentially a broken hip or leg, we don’t want her lying there for three hours, we want her in hospital within 30 to 40 minutes,” said Lazar.
The Hatzolah board addressed the issue by deciding to provide a third-party non-emergency response service itself, with Ambulance Victoria’s support.
“Our plan is to have a successful business within three-to-five years that will be self-sustaining and also sustain our not-for-profit activities,” Lazar said, adding that the goal is to have four vehicles operating the non-emergency service within its first five years.
In planning this service, Hatzolah is reaching out to the Jewish community and will soon launch a fundraising campaign.
Separately, Hatzolah Comprehensive Community Services, an accredited training, education, and first-aid supplies business, will be formally launched on October 16, national Restart A Heart Day.
This new Hatzolah outfit will run an open day for the community and communal organisations to offer an insight to its activities, including some groundbreaking training systems and other tools.
“Utilising all our community-based resources involved in the care and treatment of our patients, we can deliver better patient outcomes,” said Lazar.
Info: hatzolah.org.au
PETER KOHN
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