‘Extreme pressure’: Documents link deaths to Qld ambulance and hospital waits

The deaths of at least 15 people in south-east Queensland have been linked to ambulance waits and stretched hospital systems since early 2021, a trove of documents released by the state opposition shows.

Among them were the deaths of a woman in a Gold Coast nursing home who waited more than two hours for an ambulance amid “extreme pressure” on paramedics, and an Indooroopilly woman found dead by suicide after “excessive” demand-driven delay.

The Significant Incident Reviews are standard processes to determine whether an event — from patient deaths to paramedics being injured on the job — needs further investigation.

The opposition, which has made public more than 500 pages of Queensland Ambulance Service Significant Incident Reviews through right-to-information laws, says the trove shows people died because of an overwhelmed health system.

“Every single one of these Queenslanders and their families are owed answers by the state government,” said opposition leader David Crisafulli, whose party held the latest of its statewide town hall health meetings in Brisbane on Sunday.

“It’s hard to fathom how this is happening in Queensland today.”

Health Minister Yvette D’Ath said there was no denying the state’s health system — and those of other jurisdictions around the country — was under pressure even before the pandemic, which had exacerbated issues around demand and resource levels.

But she refuted the opposition’s suggestions that the standard reviews were secretive, or made any findings about the cause of the deaths, among more than 1.8 million ambulance responses across the almost 16-month period.

“This is the normal process that QAS go through, but it is very unfair to the health workers to report that these delays led to these people’s deaths,” she said. “But of course, every death is sad and tragic.”

The trove of documents cover south-east Queensland Hospital and Health Service units between the start of 2021 and April 13 this year — a period which included two of the state’s three largest COVID waves, both in 2022.

But of the 15 deaths identified by this masthead with links to resource-driven ambulance and hospital delays, only two occurred this year — one during one of the “busiest days on record” for state triple-zero calls in January.

A total of 119 pages were refused due to cases before the coroner or Office of the Health Ombudsman, the opposition said.

The reviews are standard processes to determine whether an event — from patient deaths to paramedics being injured on the job — needs further investigation.

At an estimates hearing in July, QAS Commissioner Craig Emery said there had been 317 in the 2021-22 financial year, with nine referred on to the coroner. Only two of those had been finalised.

Crisafulli said a plan was needed for more hospital beds, better triaging, real-time data and an empowerment of frontline staff to make more decisions themselves.

D’Ath said the response was not that simple, and was tied up in declining GP access, private health insurance cover, and hospitals beds occupied by people who should be in aged or disability care — issues her government was working on with the Commonwealth.

The state will also host a health workforce summit in the coming week.

Dr Shantha Raghwan, Queensland deputy chair of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine said all health systems across the country were “no longer fit for purpose”, an issue which at its worst culminated in situations like those outlined in the documents.

“Fixing these issues requires a collaborative approach, and one that transcends bipartisan politics.”

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