Every day, roughly 3,800 Queenslanders pick up the phone and dial Triple Zero (000). Now, thanks to the expanded Queensland Ambulance Service Clinical Hub at Kedron, nearly half of those callers are being navigated toward the most appropriate care for their needs — which isn’t always an ambulance.
Read: Kedron Emergency Hub Expansion Aims to Ease Strain on QLD’s Ambulances
The $8.31 million expansion of the QAS Clinical Hub, housed within the Emergency Services Complex at Kedron, was completed in February 2026. It represents one of the most significant upgrades to Queensland’s emergency response infrastructure in recent years, and much of it is happening on Brisbane’s northside.
From Pandemic Stopgap to State-Wide Lifeline
The Clinical Hub wasn’t always what it is today. It started in 2020 as a relatively modest operation, a small team working 16-hour days during the COVID-19 pandemic, designed to help hospitals and paramedics manage a surge in demand.
What began as a temporary measure grew into something far more enduring. The hub now operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and employs more than 140 staff. Its multidisciplinary team includes senior paramedics, specialist doctors, registered nurses, mental health clinicians, social workers, occupational therapists and physiotherapists, a breadth of expertise that allows the hub to respond to a wide range of needs well beyond a traditional emergency call centre.
The expansion has more than doubled the hub’s physical capacity, growing from 26 workstations to 66, giving clinicians the tools and space to handle the volume of calls the service now receives.
What Happens When You Call
Queensland’s Triple Zero network receives a call approximately every 24 seconds. In the last three months of 2025 alone, that added up to more than 335,000 calls statewide. Of the roughly 3,800 daily calls, around 1,800 are directed to the Clinical Hub for what the QAS describes as secondary triage and health navigation.
Clinicians take a thorough, case-by-case approach to each call. They may conduct a video or telehealth consultation to get a clearer picture of what a patient is experiencing before determining the most appropriate response. That response might be an ambulance, but it might also be clinical advice, a mental health referral, connection to aged care services, or follow-up through community health programs.
Between July and December 2025, more than 33,000 Queenslanders received care through the hub without an ambulance being dispatched. That’s thousands of hospital trips avoided and ambulances kept free for time-critical emergencies — the kind that cannot wait.
Easing the Pressure on a Stretched System
The expansion couldn’t come at a more critical time. Queensland’s emergency departments have seen demand climb 4.5 per cent over the past five years. Ambulance ramping, which is the delays that occur when paramedics cannot promptly transfer patients at hospital, remains a persistent challenge, with 41 per cent of patients ramped beyond the recommended time across 26 of the state’s public hospitals.
The Clinical Hub contributes to easing these pressures by identifying calls that don’t require an ambulance response before a vehicle is ever dispatched. Hub Director Sam Herring has described the shift in thinking as moving away from a one-size-fits-all approach to emergency care, one where every Triple Zero call no longer automatically means two paramedics at the front door.
Director of integrated multidisciplinary care programs Sandra Garner has spoken about the hub’s focus on thoroughly understanding a patient’s needs to navigate them toward care that is better tailored to their circumstances than a trip to an emergency department would be.
What It Means for Kedron and Beyond
For locals, the Emergency Services Complex at Kedron has long been a familiar landmark. What many may not realise is that it now houses a critical health coordination centre serving Queenslanders state-wide, a facility that supports around 1,800 people every single day.
Read: Kedron Ambulance Worker Named Finalist for Everyday Heroes Award
Work is already underway to repurpose the former hub space into additional office and training facilities, further supporting the QAS workforce that keeps the service running.
As Queensland’s health system faces rising demand and increasing pressure on frontline services, the expanded QAS Clinical Hub at Kedron offers a practical model for ensuring Queenslanders reach the right care.
Published 18-February-2026
