Fury as triple-0 crisis explodes, people die waiting for ambulances

Health bodies have dismissed claims that EDs clogged with people with minor ailments is a major factor in the hospital system’s havoc.

Emergency departments are not being clogged by people with minor ailments and removing them from the equation would not solve ambulance ramping at hospitals, health experts have said.

An explosive Queensland Ambulance dossier revealed there were at least 20 cases between January 2021 and April 2022 where paramedics under “extreme pressure” were delayed turning up to a call for help and the patient died during the wait, on a hospital ramp, or a few days later.

Health Minister Yvette D’Ath, speaking at a sod turning for a new satellite hospital in Kallangur, said every death was “sad and tragic” but doubled down on the assertion no death had been “directly” linked to ambulance delays.

Health Minister Yvette D'Ath turns the sod on the new Kallangur Satellite Hospital. Picture: Liam Kidston

She said it was “not fair” to the QAS to link ambulance delays as a factor behind someone’s death, because the public would read that as it “contributed to that person’s death”.

Ms D’Ath said the QAS dossier – obtained by the state LNP through right-to-information – needed to be framed against the context of 1.8 million calls the service responded to in the same 16 month time frame.

She acknowledged the health system was “under incredible pressure”, but that reducing ambulance wait times in Queensland would “take some time” and “effort across the whole of the health sector”.

Health bodies, including the Australian College of Emergency Medicine and the Australian Medical Association of Queensland, have said the tragedies listed in the documents were a “symptom” of a much larger health system crisis.

But they also warned hospital “bed block” – which flows on to become ambulance ramping – was not being caused by people attending emergency departments for issues that GPs could have fixed.

ACEM deputy chairwoman Dr Shantha Raghwan said those patients were quick to treat and sent on their way and there seemed to be a lot of “interventions” by authorities to get these patients care in the community, although it wouldn’t solve the bed block and ramping problems.

“What we need is a whole hospital and a whole system approach to improve the flow of those patients who do need to be in hospital, to get into those hospital beds,” she said.

“And in order to do that, we need to get those patients who are in hospital beds … back into the community.”

AMAQ president Dr Maria Boulton said general practice needed to be adequately funded to help prevent disease and severe acute issues that did end up putting people in emergency departments.

Ambulances at the QEII hospital in Brisbane on Sunday. Picture: Steve Pohlner

“But it just seems that people are presenting with more chronic issues that deteriorate quite rapidly and then they need a hospital bed for like four or five days,” she said.

“And we are getting all these people moving to Queensland … and it seems that we haven’t catered for the population.”

The Kallangur satellite hospital, just like the other six being built around the state, has been plagued by supply chain-induced delays.

The purpose of the facilities will be to “take pressure off” the emergency departments, help people with minor injuries and have facilities for renal dialysis and chemotherapy, according to Ms D’Ath.

Ms D’Ath acknowledged Queensland’s ageing and growing population, but also pointed to the federally controlled sectors of aged care, disability care, and dwindling private health insurance take up as pinch points of the system.

Opposition Leader David Crisafulli said the cases revealed in the QAS dossier were horrifying for the families and hardworking paramedics who were victims of “poor state government planning for over half a decade”.

“Devastatingly, they show that Queenslanders have died because our health system has been overwhelmed. Every one of them is a tragedy,” he said.