Qld ambulance ramping still unacceptably high, figures show

New Health Minister Shannon Fentiman has been accused of trying to avoid scrutiny of new figures on an escalating crisis.

Queensland Health has failed to make a dent in the ongoing ambulance ramping crisis plaguing the state’s emergency departments, with new data revealing half of all patients transported to hospital are stuck on a stretcher for more than 30 minutes.

New Health Minister Shannon Fentiman released the latest hospital performance data yesterday during a visit to Logan Hospital’s new birthing suites.

Ms Fentiman said although she was pleased to report a 58 per cent increase in elective surgery in the March quarter over the previous one, she wanted to see better outcomes.

“We’ve also seen a huge increase in presentations to our emergency departments. Over half a million people presented to our emergency departments in the last quarter,” she said.

“But we are seeing that 71 per cent of people who present to emergency departments are being seen within the clinically recommended times, and that is leading the nation.

“I want to see better performance when it comes to taking pressure off our ambulance services, better performance in our emergency departments and continuing to get through that elective surgery wait list.”

Statewide ramping figures show a two-percentage-point increase – now at 43 per cent of patients not off a stretcher in 30 minutes, compared with 41 per cent the previous quarter.

And although all category 1 patients presenting to the state’s EDs are seen on time when it comes to category 2 patients seen within clinically recommended time frames that drops to just 55 per cent.

There are 58,446 people still on the waiting list for surgery, and the proportion of those patients not seen on time is up – 23.7 per cent this quarter, from 22.2 per cent last.

Health Minister Shannon Fentiman on Saturday. Picture: David Clark

“So my message today is even though our emergency departments are doing much, much more, I want to thank the amazing frontline staff for their work, the message is there’s still more to do,” she said.

Busy emergency departments at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital and Logan Hospital are shows patients transferred off-stretcher within 30 minutes 49 per cent and 33 per cent respectively.

Queensland Health does not keep last quarter’s data live on its website, making comparison difficult.

Opposition Leader David Crisafulli said the new figures showed Queensland was now the worst in the nation for ambulance ramping.

“Nearly one in two Queenslanders are ramped in their hour of need and the blame lies squarely with the chaotic Palaszczuk Government which is lurching from crisis to crisis,.” he said.

“We’ve been putting our solutions on the table which include more resources, better triaging, releasing data in real time and putting doctors and nurses back in charge to improve patient care.

“The Premier and her ministers must start listening, stop releasing data in secret and take some real action to heal the Queensland Health crisis.”

Opposition integrity spokeswoman Fiona Simpson accused Ms Fentiman of not being upfront by releasing the figures “on a Saturday afternoon after a full Parliament sitting week”.

Ms Fentiman said 93 per cent of code-one ambulance jobs were responded to in time, which was “amazing”.

“By working with our emergency departments and our hospitals and working on that patient flow will help patients get off that stretcher earlier so our ambulances can get back out on the road,” she said.