Kerre Woodham: Emergency services need an upgraded system

Further to the story yesterday regarding the police’s planned withdrawal from social services call outs, there's been a damning indictment of our 111 system.  

According to papers released after an OIA put in by RNZ, the government was warned a year ago that the 111-emergency call system is so old, so slow, and so fragmented, that it is causing deaths and injuries.  

So, the emergency services put together a business case asking for money to upgrade it and integrate it. Labour, however, dropped the project last August when they were in government, to replace the system. It's shared between police and FENZ. In the papers, both police and FENZ made the plea that there was an urgent and pressing need to replace it.  

Now I don't know about you, but there are only a few agencies I'll believe when they say it's urgent and pressing. If police and FENZ say it's urgent and pressing, they're two of the few agencies I'll believe. You tell me you've got an urgent need, officer, I'll believe you.  

However, I guess the Labour government had bigger fish to fry, or more things to worry about last August, so they passed the buck on that one. According to the emergency services, a major flaw in the system is that it can only take phone calls. Why is that a problem? Well, these days you need text, and you need video. It's also unable to liaise with social media platforms and has poor integration between apps. And it's a problem because the papers cite an example of a woman who was stabbed to death by a partner who overheard her making the 111 call.  

It must have been harrowing for the call taker, harrowing for the woman's family. A modern solution, argue the emergency services, could have enabled the woman to notify police by a method other than a voice call, which the man would not have detected. So, there have got to be silent ways of making your danger known and I totally accept.  

Other examples offered in the business case to Parliament when the request for an upgraded system was made include a man drowned at a beach and the time it took an ambulance and a paramedic to get there after a 111 call to them, when police and surf rescue at the same beach were not alerted by the fragmented system, so there's not one that joins up the dots. That says, is there anybody in this area? Anybody on this beach? Yep, we are ...  cool, off you go.  

Firefighters were called out by 111 to help a woman tend a man who had collapsed when confronted by a shooter. But the system didn't let police who were hunting the shooter know that they were there. So, the frontline responders and the woman are unaware of the danger that they're in.  

They take a lot of calls. FENZ takes 350,000 calls a year and uses the old system, ‘Card’, to dispatch crews to 85,000 emergencies. Police handle 1.4 million 111 calls a year and 1.8 million 105 calls. A quarter of which are upgraded to an emergency.  

You'd have to wonder, given the discussion we had with Chris Cahill yesterday, how many of those 111 calls are necessary. I mean, we have to do our bit too. If you leave accident and emergency departments for accidents and emergencies, and if you leave 111 for genuine emergencies, that would help out a lot.  

But at the same time, there is just no excuse for not having a fully integrated system across all our first responders, surely. The idea that surf lifesavers and police didn't know that there was an emergency happening on the beach they were at, it's just ludicrous.  

Now there's a suggestion that the 111 system —this comes from Matt Doocey, who's the Minister for Mental Health— that the 111 system add a fourth option alongside fire, police, and ambulance, and that would be mental health crisis. That is a great idea in theory. Absolutely. You know, you don't want a police response when you're having a mental health crisis. You need mental health professionals. Dial, 111 in crisis, you get one. Or do you?  

First, we have to ensure we have sufficient mental health professionals who would be able to respond to the crisis. And then we have to ensure that a system that is less than optimal right now, could actually handle a fourth function. I'd love to hear of your experience of needing urgent help, 111.  

I do like the idea of mental health crisis being added to fire police ambulance. I think that's a great idea. But we have to have enough mental health professionals and we have to surely upgrade the system and upgrade it now.   

I really feel for this government. I mean just about every interview I've heard on the Mike Hosking Breakfast since Mike came back, maybe 6-7 interviews a morning are from people, organisations, groups, industry bodies asking for money. Because th