A Rutherford man has questioned whether the city has enough ambulances to cater for its population after an intensive care paramedic turned up at his home without an ambulance.
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Mr Johnson asked his wife to call an ambulance on March 17 because he was suffering from chest pain. He expected an ambulance to respond but instead a specialised intensive care paramedic from Beresfield arrived at his home in a car within 18 minutes of the call.
Mr Johnson said the paramedic told him all of the available ambulances had been called to a serious accident.
NSW Ambulance did not say why an ambulance had not responded but noted that "a number of other specialist paramedics may be deployed to the area depending on patient demand".
"These include Extended Care Paramedics, Paramedic Immediate Care Unit and Duty Operations Managers. All of these paramedics have the capacity to respond to emergency and non-emergency patients, and to transport low acuity patients in some circumstances," the spokeswoman said.
Mr Johnson said his experience showed the city needed more ambulances.
"I'm saying this town deserves better," he said.
"I could have been dead in 10 minutes."
The spokeswoman said the Rutherford ambulance station, and stations in Cessnock, Kurri Kurri and Beresfield responded to calls from the community.
She did not say how many ambulances were stationed at each site.
She also said The Hunter New England sector would receive 19 extra paramedics within the next year. This was part of the government's commitment to create 750 extra paramedics.
Mr Johnson said the paramedic who responded to the call did perform appropriately but he felt he would have been better equipped if he had arrived in an ambulance.
"He put the ECG on me and checked me out and said he wanted to take me to hospital so I went with him to the hospital ... They could only take me in the car because he only had one spare seat so my wife had to find her own way there," he said.
"I was in hospital for about two hours before they said it wasn't a heart attack, it was muscle pain in that vicinity.
"It could have been a very different story for me if it was a heart attack."