Strong results delivered in St John 2017/18 annual report

More than a million West Australians used a St John WA service in the past year, according to data published in the organisation’s 2017/18 Annual Report.

St John Chief Executive Officer Michelle Fyfe said the report, released today, showcased some outstanding results for St John.

She said the results included achieving the majority of its ambulance response time targets and training more than 403,000 Western Australians in first aid.

“In the past year over one million people have come into contact with St John WA, either as a patient or a first aid student. Our 1578 staff and 8489 volunteers can be incredibly proud to have had such a profound impact on our community,” Mrs Fyfe said.

“Our integrated service delivers great value and service for the community of Western Australia and we are immensely proud of this fact.”

There were more than 318,000 ambulance cases in WA in the year ending June 30, up from 301,251 in 2016/17, a rise of 5.6 per cent.

“Ambulance response times consistently met our targets in the metropolitan area as they did in the vast majority of our country career centres, ensuring life goes on for many,” she said.

The State Operations Centre, which handles all triple zero ambulance calls (000), received 592,079 calls in 2017/18, up from 574,479 in 2016/17.

Our Patient Transfer Service, which provides all non-urgent medical transport, continued to regularly exceed performance targets and we experienced very strong growth in community transport.

“In the area of primary health and urgent care, which only became a part of St John in mid-2016, we saw 288,691 people in one of our GP or urgent care services,” Mrs Fyfe said.

“Our three Urgent Care Centres saw more than 57,000 patients, helping to ease the strain on busy emergency departments,” she said.

St John ended the financial year with a surplus of $19 million, up from $17.4 million in 2016/17.

“This continues a trend over several years of sound financial management,” Mrs Fyfe said.

“This allows us to reinvest in the ambulance service and continue our charitable activities, such as free first aid programs for Western Australian school children.”

Major capital works programs completed in 2017/18 included construction of a new depot and training facility in Hedland, a new training centre in Fremantle and new facilities in Katanning, Northam and Augusta.

The annual report can be downloaded here.