Ramping figures rise in November, but Labor says latest Covid wave is to blame

Paramedics and patients spent the equivalent of 150 days ramped across the state’s hospitals in November – but Labor says the latest Covid wave is the reason.

Ambulance ramping surged at several Adelaide hospitals in November, new figures show.

The government has blamed the latest Covid wave while the opposition says Labor has made no progress towards its election promise to fix the problem.

Ramping trended upwards by at total of 185 hours last month across metropolitan hospitals after declining in October.

But at 3516 hours in total for November it was 8.8 per cent lower than the June high of 3855.

There were 1114 hours lost at Flinders Medical Centre in November, up from 986 in October and way ahead of the 796 in the same month last year.

While 1071 hours were lost at the Royal Adelaide Hospital last month, up from 1047 in October and 619 the previous November.

Health Minister Chris Picton said the omicron wave contributed to demand, including an increase in hospitalisations and a number of furloughed hospital staff.

There was a 7 per cent increase in triple-0 calls across November.

“We are still seeing persistent number of Covid cases in the community and that’s putting pressure on our emergency departments as well,” Mr Picton said.

“We were very clear that we had a plan in terms of building over 300 beds across our system.

“We’ve now upped that to more than 550 beds across the system, but it takes time to build those additional beds.”

Health Minister Chris Picton has blamed Covid for an increase in ramping hours. Picture: NCA NewsWire/David Mariuz

Across the state there were 9986 new Covid cases reported in the past week, up from 9684 the previous week. There were 35 Covid-related deaths notified.

Mr Picton said hospitals in Adelaide’s south were particularly hard hit by Covid cases.

“We have been seeing some trends down (in ramping), particularly over the last six months, and that’s still continuing in the central hospitals – but we do have an issue in terms of Covid in the southern hospitals,” Mr Picton said.

Ramping was up at Lyell McEwin, Modbury and Noarlunga hospitals last month, but fell at Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

Opposition health spokesperson Ashton Hurn said: “For a promise that was central to Labor’s campaign, it is absolutely appalling that the promise to ‘fix ramping’ is clearly sliding further and further down Peter Malinauskas’ priority list.”

Ms Hurn labelled the decision to share the November statistics a “backflip”, a month after SA Health chief executive Robyn Lawrence suggested South Australians did not need access to hospital-specific ramping data, which was not routinely provided by SA Health.

The figures come as construction begins for 32 new hospital beds at the Repat’s geriatric unit – six more than initially promised – with the aim of freeing space at Flinders Medical Centre.

The new Repat service is anticipated to be complete by mid-2024.