Operations Centres
The Service’s four operations centres are responsible for receiving all emergency triple 000 telephone requests for ambulance services from the public, allied health care providers and other emergency services. Operations centres coordinate the movement of ambulances within their division to meet the needs of the community.
- Sydney Operations Centre, located in Sydney, coordinates resources within the Sydney Division, encompassing the Hawkesbury River to the north, the Blue Mountains to the west and The Royal National Park to the south.
- Northern Operations Centre, located in Newcastle, coordinates resources within the Northern Division, extending from the Queensland border to the Hawkesbury River in the south, including the towns of Murrurundi and Merriwa to the west.
- Southern Operations Centre, located in Wollongong, coordinates resources within the Southern Division, extending from Helensburgh in the north to the Victorian border, continuing west to the South Australian border.
- Western Operations Centre, located in Dubbo, coordinates resources within the Western Division, from the Queensland border in the north, the South Australian border to the west, Oberon and Ivanhoe to the south and Lithgow to the east.
- Aeromedical Operations Centre, located in Sydney, coordinates all urgent and routine aeroplane and helicopter transfers within New South Wales.
Click here for a detailed map of New South Wales.
Operations centre officers are responsible for receiving all incoming 000 telephone calls, both emergency from the public and non-emergency calls from health care organisations requesting an ambulance.
Operations officers also send ambulance resource/s to both emergency and non emergency patients. These officers can monitor the location of all ambulances and send the closest available ambulance or non-emergency vehicle depending on the patient’s location.
Depending on the location or condition of the patient, operations centre officers may also involve the medical retrieval unit and arrange for a helicopter to be sent.
Operations Centre Technology
The Ambulance Computer Aided Dispatch (AmbCAD) system utilises cutting edge software
that is currently used by over 300 emergency services worldwide
covering ambulance, police and fire operations. The CAD system
allows Ambulance to manage workload and allocate appropriate ambulances
to scheduled and
emergency calls.
Operations Centre staff obtain all relevant information from both
emergency and non-emergency callers and enters this directly into the CAD
system. Each incident is prioritised based on questions answered by the
caller using a triaging application called ProQA, and is then assigned to
the closest appropriate ambulance vehicle utilising GPS tracking technology.
Details of the call are then transmitted through a government owned
data network to ambulance officers who read the details on the Mobile Data
Terminal located in the front cabin of the ambulance.
Mobile Data Terminals (MDT)
Mobile Data Terminals provide the paramedics with relevant
patient information entered into the CAD system by operations
centre staff, via an easy to read display screen.
It also allows the paramedic to respond to each incident,
via buttons, to indicate that they have received the case and are
responding/at scene/departed scene, as well as sending/receiving
messages from the operations
centre.
The MDT system incorporates Global Positioning System (GPS) technology,
allowing operations centre officers to locate a vehicles' position on a
mapping screen within the CAD system.
In addition to the data network, paramedics also have a
separate radio in all ambulance vehicles which operates on the
Government Radio Network or the Ambulance Private Mobile
Radio systems, used
for the transmission of voice messages.
Each geographical division has an operations centre responsible for receiving and processing all emergency ‘000’ telephone requests for ambulance services from the public, allied health care providers and other emergency services.