SA Ambulance Service records busiest December, claims ramping is decreasing
Ramping figures are down, the service says, despite heatwaves and bushfires fuelling its busiest December on record — but the union says otherwise.
SA News
Don't miss out on the headlines from SA News. Followed categories will be added to My News.
The SA Ambulance Service recorded its busiest December ever but says ramping is falling and is on a declining trajectory.
However, its data reflects a difference of opinion with the Ambulance Employees Association whose higher figures are used by the Opposition to argue ramping has hit record levels in recent months.
SAAS’s workload in December increased by 6 per cent compared with December 2018 and by 8 per cent compared with the previous month (November 2019).
Officials say December had times in the top five of the highest daily incident counts ever recorded by SAAS as heatwaves, bushfires, Christmas and New Year incidents all contributed to an increase in workload.
Total hours recorded for “transfer of care” in December was 1511 hours.
Officials say this is a 4 per cent improvement compared with the previous month and 19 per cent improvement from September 2019.
SAAS officials say ramping figures – which the union says have soared to top 2000 hours in recent months – “do not accurately capture transfer of care” as they include Priority 5-to-8 cases where a non-emergency ambulance is at a hospital site managing a patient transfer.
They say there are also different interpretation of acceptable transfer times from an ambulance into a hospital ED for higher priority cases.
As reported by The Advertiser the union is taking the government to the Employment Tribunal on February 3 over the workload issue.
The government says a range of measures are underway to address ramping and since early 2017, about 160 additional full-time equivalent staff have been engaged by SAAS.
