Analysis: Labor couldn’t fix Qld ambulance ramping, LNP’s Tim Nicholls now feels the heat
Health Minister Tim Nicholls will be sweating as he seeks to fulfil David Crisafulli’s promise to reducing ramping by the 2028 state election. ANALYSIS
Ambulance ramping has become one of the most politically charged issues in Queensland, painting a grim picture of the state of the healthcare system that now sees almost half of patients waiting more than 30 minutes outside hospital emergency departments.
Ten months into his new role, Health Minister Tim Nicholls will be sweating over the latest July figures as he seeks to fulfil Premier David Crisafulli’s promise to reducing ramping below 30 per cent by the 2028 state election.
A serious feat with ramping currently sitting at 47.8 per cent.
Successive Labor health ministers, including Shannon Fentiman, have argued ramping is a symptom of overcrowded hospitals rather than ambulance performance.
Their strategy was to expand bed capacity by funding hospital expansion projects under the Capacity Expansion Program – a program that blew out from $9.7bn to a staggering $18bn.
The LNP scrapped that plan, hiring infrastructure specialist Sam Sangster to rewrite the hospital build playbook in an attempt to shave dollars while simultaneously delivering 400 more beds than promised under Labor.
Queenslanders are yet to see the outcome of what that new rollout will look like.
While the LNP did change how the ramping debate is framed, moving from quarterly reporting to monthly figures and introducing real-time data dashboards, it doesn’t negate that Mr Nicholls faces the same workforce shortages and infrastructure woes as his predecessors.
His fate will ultimately rest on how quickly this government can increase hospital bed capacity so sick Queenslanders -at least 29.9 per cent of them- can get off stretchers and into ED on time.
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