Australia Hopes to Solve Problem of Personnel Shortage in Domestic EMS Sector in Years to Come

The Australian central government together with the authorities of the country’s major states are taking measures aimed at solving the problem of personnel shortage in the EMS sector of Australia and to prevent the outflow of the most skilled workers to the United States and other countries.

Like other developed nations, Australia has faced with the rapid aging of local population and a sharp raise of demand for high-quality EMS services. Even though the current level of salary of local EMS personnel is generally high, it’s still lower than that of Western nations, such as the US. That leads to the outflow of skilled personnel, including specialists from other Asia Pacific nations (who historically migrated to Australia from such counties as China) to North America.

Like the population at large, the Australian EMS and healthcare sectors is aging. Once one of the best systems in the world, the system can no longer manage some present challenges. This is confirmed by earlier statements from the Australian health minister Mark Butler, who characterized the EMS and healthcare sector as “a great system for the 1980s but wholly inadequate forty years later.”

The lack of new staff and the retirement of older workers pose a serious threat of a shortage of EMS and healthcare personnel to Australia, especially given that most of the country’s population lives in the largest coastal cities. This may create a serious problem for people in rural and remote areas of the country. In addition, many local people are unhappy with the high cost of provided services, which are among the highest in the entire developed world, being comparable to those in Switzerland.

So far, the authorities of some largest Australian states have already approved a set of measures with the aim to prevent any possible shortages of EMS staff within their territories. Implementation of these plans involves the overall increase of funding to the sector and cutting expenditures on other less priority projects.

New South Wales, home of Sydney, Australia's most populous city has recently cut spending on some infrastructure projects, hoping to use these savings for the development of local EMS and healthcare sectors. It’s expected that a significant part of these funds will be used for the attraction of new personnel to the sector.  

The Health Minister of New South Wales Ryan Park said, "Without a doubt, workforce is the biggest challenge, and it's what keeps me up at night."

He added the government of NSW plans to focus on developing, retaining, and attracting the EMS and healthcare workforce in years to come, combatting the systemic issue of high turnover. That concerns both ambulance doctors and nursing staff.

As part of the plans, NSW authorities created various financial incentives aimed at keeping nurses in their jobs, or to convince them to relocate to rural and remote communities. The main target of this policy will see one nurse to every three patients in hospital emergency departments. In general, the number of nurses  working in the Australian ambulance departments is substantially lower than those in, for example, the United Kingdom.

There are also plans to attract new EMS workers to the profession to work primarily in rural and regional hospitals and ambulance departments. According to Park, cancellation of state infrastructure projects had freed up money in the budget.

"We've made some tough decisions,” he said. “We know that certain projects that haven't gone ahead, major transport projects, major underground roads, that we've made decisions on."

There are also plans to address the current "distortion" of fees being charged and to stop Australian states trying to outbid each other to fill vacancies in their EMS and healthcare sectors.

In recent years the authorities of other Australian states have approved a 25% wage increase to attract more paramedics to profession; however, the problem still exists. The authorities hope that the attraction of more personnel will make the entire system more efficient. 

In the meantime, particular attention will be paid for better equipment for ambulance departments and hospitals throughout Australia, in a response to recent calls of  the Australian Paramedics' Association. It’s currently unclear whether most of these targets will be implemented at least in the middle term due to the limited funding.

Looking back to the approved 2024-25 federal budget, Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the No. 1 priority of the government was helping Australians with the cost of living. At the time, representatives expressed concerns that federal funding of the country’s EMS and healthcare sectors could be insufficient. 

The Australian government expressed plans to continue improvements of the domestic EMS sector, planning to deliver much more healthcare through general practitioners and much less through hospitals and emergency departments. As part of state plans, that will enable doctors to focus on more complex cases. The idea is to free doctors from tasks that others can perform. The government also plans to fund the establishment of 58 urgent-care clinics as alternatives to overburdened and costly hospital emergency departments.