Ambulance ramping Qld: Worst performing hospitals revealed

Some patients are waiting over 10 hours on ambulance stretchers to get into hospital, with the worst offenders now revealed.

Queensland’s worst-impacted patients are waiting over 10 hours on ambulance stretchers to get into the state’s hospitals, new figures have revealed.

And in a concerning escalation the longest patient “off-stretcher” times appear to be growing, based on previous figures.

The newest ambulance ramping data comes days after The Courier-Mail revealed thousands of Queenslanders were visiting overwhelmed emergency departments for prescriptions, sick certificates and trivial ailments amid a drop in GP access and bulk-billing.

Queensland ambulance figures, released through a question on notice, show in the first three months of the year the longest time paramedics waited to transfer patients into a public hospital was 631 minutes — or 10.5 hours — at Ipswich Hospital.

This was followed by 630 minutes at Redland Hospital and 600 minutes again at Ipswich Hospital.

This is compared with the “median wait time” at these hospitals of 13 minutes and 24 minutes respectively.

Data released by the government earlier this year had the longest off-stretcher time as 480 minutes — or eight hours — at Brisbane’s Princess Alexandra Hospital in February 2022.

Opposition Leader David Crisafulli said ambulance ramping was a barometer of the health of the hospital network, and highlighted issues with bed-block, staff shortages and emergency department pressures.

Ambulance ramping at Princess Alexandra Hospital

“These alarming figures reveal our health system is on life-support and urgently needs intervention,” he said.

Health Minister Shannon Fentiman, responding to the question on notice, pointed out that the QAS was the busiest ambulance service in the country, with staff responding to 230 incidents per 1000 people each year.

“The hard work of our paramedics, as well as that of our amazing emergency department (ED) staff, means that the average ED waiting time is 34 minutes,” she said.

“The QAS is the busiest ambulance service in the country, responding to 1.2 million incidents a year, and is the only mainland state that is free. Something that will never change (under this government).

“Since 2015, we have employed more than additional 1100 paramedics… (thus) we have been able to ensure that more than 90 per cent of triple-0 calls are answered within 10 seconds, and 90 per cent of the most critical incidents are attended in approximately 17 minutes.”

Exclusive Queensland Health data obtained by The Courier-Mail recently revealed more than 180 presentations a day at emergency departments across the state were for health needs which could be treated by a GP or pharmacist.

In just the first four months of 2023, there were 473 presentations for ingrown toenails, 115 for sunburn, 278 for hand splinters, 44 for blisters and 13 for hiccups.