South Australia records worst month of hospital ramping on record

Only one hospital made it through March without increasing the number of hours patients spent waiting in ambulances, new figures reveal.

South Australia has recorded its worst month of ramping on record, with patients spending nearly 4000 hours waiting in ambulances.

The 3986 ramping hours recorded in March was an increase of 932 on the February figure.

All metropolitan hospitals except the Women’s and Children’s Hospital recorded individual increases, with the highest figure of 1101 hours recorded at Flinders Medical Centre — up 317 from February.

Health Minister Chris Picton. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

Health Minister Chris Picton said the result showed there was a long way to go in the government’s commitment to fix the ramping crisis.

“We have a lot of capacity that we need to build, a lot of doctors and nurses that we need to hire to improve that situation, to get to that point,” he said.

“Back in 2018, we were seeing ramping around the 1000 (hours) mark, clearly now it’s much, much higher than that. That’s not acceptable.

“That’s why we need to significantly reduce this to get it back to the point where ambulances can rock up on time.”

Ambulance response times also declined in March for urgent Priority 1 cases, which Mr Picton said highlighted the link between the two metrics.

He said the government was rolling out a range of rapid actions to improve the flow of patients through emergency departments and reduce ramping.

Those actions include weekly audits of all long-stay patients, more discharges earlier in the day, increasing utilisation of emergency department diversion care services, placing general medicine teams in emergency departments and increasing use of private hospitals for private patients.

Mr Picton said the “crumbling” of bulk billing and primary health care were responsible for unprecedented pressure on hospitals.

“When people can’t get a GP, they become sicker and are ending up in our hospitals for longer with more complex health issues,” he said.

Opposition health spokeswoman Ashton Hurn said South Australians have now endured the worst 11 months of ramping on record.

“Those 11 record months are the equivalent of well over four years’ worth of paramedics’ and patients’ time lost on the ramp, which is simply appalling,” she said.

“The month of March was a horror period for our health system and now we know why Peter Malinauskas was desperately trying to backflip on his promise to fix ramping.”

The government also released the results of an audit on the supply and availability of pillows at each of the Local Health Networks, which found there was sufficient supply but more work was needed to ensure “they get to where they need to go”.

The audit was ordered after multiple patient complaints, including the case of a 93-year-old man who was not given a pillow at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital emergency department last month.