St John Ambulance NT last week told paramedics it was ceasing two emergency procedures, roughly a year after a damning independent review into its medical treatments called for the procedures to be ended until a medical director was employed, with the report also finding multiple failures and poor decisions resulted in harm to patients and significant risk to staff.

Among the 16 recommendations made by Dr Craig Ellis in June last year, was that the service suspend three “high acuity, low occurrence” (HALO) procedures: anaesthesia assisted intubations for people having trouble breathing; incisions into windpipes to also help people breathe; and incisions into people’s chests in the case of traumatic heart attacks.

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