Ambulance Tasmania met only 17% of national safety standards in mock assessment

Ambulance Tasmania fully met just 17 per cent of actions in a mock assessment of its progress in meeting national safety and quality standards.

The National Safety and Quality Health Service standards are designed to ensure health services provide nationally consistent, high-quality care.

Ambulance Tasmania engaged the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards to conduct a mock readiness assessment to see how it was performing against the standards.

The Health Department had refused to provide the council's report, which was finalised in June 2025, but the ABC obtained it under right-to-information provisions.

Across the 138 relevant actions in the standards, Ambulance Tasmania met 23, met 66 with recommendations and did not meet 49.

That equates to 17 per cent of the actions being fully met.

Accreditation is voluntary for ambulance services, but the report states it could become mandatory in the future.

The only state-based ambulance service currently accredited is South Australia's.

Delays in responding to coronial recommendations and severe incidents

The assessors expressed concerns about Ambulance Tasmania's performance, stating it could in future trigger a requirement for them to inform the Australian Commission for Safety and Quality in Health Care — which developed the standards — under the "notification of significant risk" policy.

"Some delays in responding to SAC 1 and coroner's recommendations, combined with the number of not met actions across several standards, may in the future require notification to the commission and the governing body," the report states.

SAC 1 in a healthcare setting refers to a "severity assessment code one" incident where a patient died or was seriously harmed — or there was a risk of that happening — due to the healthcare provided, or lack thereof.

Assessors also found staff lacked confidence in the incident reporting system.

Other findings were that most policies and procedures were out of date, there was no capability in the information system to record if a patient was Indigenous, and risks were not being "effectively or transparently managed".

The report said addressing the issues would take a "substantial investment of time (potentially 1-3 years) and resources".

However, the report praised the staff at Ambulance Tasmania.

"Consultants had the opportunity to meet and observe many dedicated staff who are eager to contribute to safe, high-quality services and to meet service requirements," the report states.

'Diabolical outcome', paramedics' union says

The Health and Community Services Union described the report as "alarming".

"We think this is a diabolical outcome for Ambulance Tasmania," state secretary Robbie Moore said.

"This report makes it clear that Ambulance Tasmania could not be accredited."

Mr Moore said there would be outrage if a hospital or aged care provider could not be accredited.

"The ambulance service isn't meeting clear standards that are national benchmarks and they're not only just missing, they're missing by a mile," he said.

"This is a really untenable situation that needs proper resources allocated to it to get to the bottom of this and to get the ambulance service to where it needs to be."

Mr Moore said he understood Ambulance Tasmania had given up on the accreditation process.

"They should be going through this process again now, but as we understand it, they're trying to hide from this process and not even try and meet accreditation," he said.

Improvements made since report, health department says

The Health Department said Ambulance Tasmania was committed to continuous improvement.

"As part of this commitment, AT proactively requested the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards to undertake a series of mock readiness assessments against the National Safety and Quality Health Standards in 2024 and 2025 – noting these are not accreditation assessments," a spokesperson said.

"Where opportunities for improvement were identified, AT worked with the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards to develop an action plan, with many of the actions now completed."

They said the improvements included:

Development of a robust credentialing framework, including three new protocols, which are currently being implemented

Completion of a full policy review process and uplift

Review of the Ambulance Tasmania Clinical Governance Framework, currently undergoing re-design

Re-allocation of responsibilities across three existing positions to create dedicated safety and quality capacity

The spokesperson also said Ambulance Tasmania was working to implement coronial recommendations and improve oversight of reported incidents.