SA Ambulance Service reported ambulance incidents by priority

The number of SA Ambulance service reported incidents by priority, calendar year and quarter. An incident is an event that results in one or more responses by an ambulance service. The priority of an incident is the highest (most urgent) priority of all the responses assigned to that incident.

In some instances responses to the same incident may be dispatched with different priorities (e.g. a code 1 response to a code 1 incident may be supported by an additional code 2 response as a back-up – In this example the incident priority would code 1 as it is the most urgent priority).

Responses are prioritised as: emergency (code 1) — immediate response under lights and sirens required (incident is potentially life threatening); urgent (code 2) — undelayed response required without lights and sirens (arrival desirable within 30 minutes); *Non-emergency (code 3 and code 4) non-urgent response by required ambulance or patient transport service; and casualty room attendance.