The caffeine overdose death of an aspiring cancer researcher who waited more than seven hours for an ambulance was preventable, a coroner has found.
She died alone in her bathroom.
It was suggested that the overdose might not have been fatal, but determining the exact preventable time of her death was challenging due to the limited information available about the quantity and timing of Lackmann’s caffeine consumption.
The coroner criticized Ambulance Victoria for failing to attend to Lackmann promptly, citing the delay as “unacceptable” with the majority of their vehicles occupied at busy hospitals, making them unable to respond to emergencies the night Lackmann passed away.
Ambulance Victoria undertook an internal review and has made changes to its systems.
Efforts are being made in collaboration with the health department to address the issue of ambulance ramping, a situation where paramedics have to wait outside overcrowded emergency departments to transfer patients, in order to improve emergency response times.
Victoria’s statewide benchmark is for 90 per cent of ambulance patients to be transferred to emergency care within 40 minutes of arrival.
However, latest statewide data showed 69.6 per cent of ambulance patients were admitted to an emergency department within 40 minutes.
The median wait time in March was 26 minutes.
Hospitals have been required to deliver a four per cent improvement in ambulance offload times by the end of June under emergency department standards to reduce ramping.
