Non-Emergency Patient Transport (NEPT) is a vital service that is traditionally used to transport sick, injured or otherwise medically necessary patients between healthcare facilities in Victoria. 

Over the past few years, NEPT has been used increasingly to respond to Triple - 0 calls for seemingly non-life-threatening medical emergencies in place of government emergency ambulances and qualified paramedics.

NEPT staff respond to these calls and treat patients as best they can with the level of equipment and training they are provided but often patients are sicker than thought and this leads to a massive delay in some time-critical patients receiving access to advanced life support and pharmacology that comes with Emergency Ambulances. 

The Andrews Government needs to act urgently and bring the NEPT sector back inline with community expectations and hold NEPT contractors to account for providing little to no training and paying their staff 30% less than the equivalent government employee. 

The NEPT contractors concerned are;

Royal Flying Doctors Service (RFDS)
St John's Ambulance (SJA) 
National Patient Transport (NPT)
Wilson Medic One (WM1) 
Paramedical Services Victoria (PSV)

If the NEPT sector is to continue to provide this vital service staff need to be guaranteed minimum pay in line with equivalent Ambulance Victoria roles (Patient Transport Officer & Ambulance Transport Attendant), provided with industry-wide training that reflects the nature of responding to emergencies as paramedics do and equal equipment that is standardised like emergency ambulances. 

The Ambulance Victoria contract that allows NEPT to respond to these jobs is currently under tender and now is the best time for the Andrew's government to act.