Ambulance Victoria (AV) is using Victoria’s virtual emergency department (VVED) to provide care for residents of aged care facilities under the residential aged care enhanced response (RACER) alternative care pathway.

The pathway uses the VVED, run by Northern Health, to link residential aged care facilities to expert advice and a wider range of alternative care options that better meet the patient’s needs.

The ideas is to better connect and coordinate Triple Zero (000) calls from residential aged care facilities. According to AV, over 90 per cent of calls from RACFs that receive an ambulance response result in the patient attending an emergency department, which is often not necessary.

AV medical director David Anderson said aged care patients, due to their frailty and chronic illness, have higher rates of ambulance use.

“But we know these trips to hospital can be very disruptive and stressful for them,” Dr Anderson said. “RACER will help minimise stress and disruption, while at the same time relieving the growing demand on hospitals due to the COVID-19 pandemic by reducing non-urgent and repeat call-outs and time paramedics spend with cases.

“This in turn improves the availability of ambulances to reach the sickest patients faster.”

The RACER pathway operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week and was developed to ensure the service is easy to access, efficient, and supports paramedics to provide the best care.

It is part of a program of work at Ambulance Victoria called AV Care Connect, which will in future see alternative care pathways created for people in palliative care, mental health patients, and patients with complex conditions who are frequent callers to Triple Zero (000).

AV is already providing services to aged care through the older person care connect project. RACER, which began last week, is being tested with patients who have been triaged as requiring non-emergency transport to ensure that the pathway is comprehensively tested in operation before it expands to lower acuity patients.

Triple Zero (000) calls will be triaged as usual through ESTA, and if a lights and sirens response is required, an ambulance will be dispatched. The attending crew will then consult with Northern Health’s VVED and may be referred to a more appropriate local service or to the ED.