St John in Dunedin has put on an extra ambulance crew during the busiest part of the day to cope with demand.
St John South Island regional operations manager Chris Haines said the extra crew was being trialled to support the city's five existing crews, including one in Mosgiel, between mid-morning and mid-afternoon.
It follows the establishment last year of an ambulance station in South Dunedin, where the ageing population was placing greater demands on the ambulance service.
Part of the reason for trialling an extra crew at that time of the day was so the service could improve its response times to high-priority calls.
The ambulance service, which was not fully funded by the Government, was technically within its target response times for priority-one calls but was constantly trying to improve its service on limited funds.
The Otago Daily Times recently questioned St John after it took 20 minutes for an advanced paramedic to arrive at the scene of an attempted murder in South Rd, Dunedin, in July.
An ambulance arrived nearly half an hour after the initial call at 11.53am. The victim had multiple stab and axe wounds.
Asked why it took so long, St John initially insisted an ambulance arrived within six minutes of the call. When the ODT queried that, it later agreed the paramedic did not arrive until 12.13pm, and the ambulance until 12.19pm.
Mr Haines said that when the call came in, all of Dunedin's ambulances were busy on other jobs, so the nearest available duty officer - the backup when ambulances are all committed and a priority one job comes in - responded from Mosgiel in a rapid-response vehicle.
The next available ambulance responded as soon as it could leave the hospital.
He apologised that the initial information was incorrect.
He said it was an isolated incident and he was confident St John's information to the public was otherwise always honest and accurate.
In relation to an incident a few days earlier when a member of the public contacted St John concerned that it took, by their timing, 25 minutes for an ambulance to get to a seriously-injured pedestrian in Surrey St, Dunedin, he said St John's records showed it took an ambulance 12 minutes to get there.
Again, all available Dunedin ambulances had been committed and the nearest available ambulance came from Mosgiel.
"Although the first ambulance to respond was longer than 10 minutes, I can assure you that St John responded in the best possible way with the resources [ambulances and crews] available."
Technically, St John met all its target response times in Dunedin, but was still always trying to respond more quickly.
The target was to arrive at 50% of all priority-one callouts within eight minutes, and 95% within 20 minutes.
Last year, 59% of the 5454 priority-one calls in Dunedin were responded to within eight minutes, and 95% within 20 minutes.
It took longer than 20 minutes to respond to 287 of the calls.
There were several reasons why St John might not reach priority-one patients in Dunedin within eight minutes, including that all available ambulances were committed to other jobs, and that the size of the Dunedin area, which included Palmerston and Middlemarch, meant it was not always possible for ambulances to arrive within eight minutes, Mr Haines said.
