‘Repeatedly deceitful’: Fentiman slammed over ambulance ramping

After being accused of lacking transparency, the Health Minister clapped back at her rival for not knowing “basic maths”.

• Editor’s view: Transparency please

Health Minister Shannon Fentiman has been accused of skewing ambulance performance data to avoid revealing how many hours paramedics lost waiting outside emergency departments.

The state government, in response to an LNP question, revealed the average time each ambulance lost when ramped rather than the total time data it has previously provided.

Shadow Health spokeswoman Ros Bates accused Ms Fentiman of attempting to skew figures, noting lost-time data from the first nine-months of 2023 was on track to eclipse the worst on record.

The opposition routinely extracts “lost-time” data as a measure of the hours paramedics spend ramped with patients to prosecute the government’s health management.

Queensland ambulances regularly spend thousands of hours outside emergency departments each month, with the data for each hospital and health service handed over at least five times since September 2022.

Queensland Health Minister Shannon Fentiman. Picture: Shae Beplate.

When asked again in February, Ms Fentiman provided the average time each ambulance lost when ramped as opposed to the total time — infuriating Ms Bates who accused the Minister of being “repeatedly deceitful”.

“Shannon Fentiman said she’d be different to her predecessor Yvette D’Ath when it comes to transparency and she is, she’s worse,” Ms Bates said.

“Shannon Fentiman has become less accountable, less transparent and has failed to understand just saying you’re transparent doesn’t make it so.”

The Health Minister dismissed the opposition’s complaint, insisting the data was provided as requested “just in a different format”.

“If Ros Bates cannot do simple maths, I do not know how she can expect to run a health system,” she said.

“Our government is providing more data than ever before because we are committed to ensuring our health system is as transparent, accessible and as usable as possible, so Queenslanders can more easily make informed decisions about their health.”

Health spokeswoman Ros Bates wrote to the Speaker last week. Picture: David Clark

Ms Bates has written to Speaker Curtis Pitt demanding Ms Fentiman hand over details about hours paramedics waited outside emergency departments.

She noted lost-time data from the first nine-months of 2023 was on track to eclipse the worst figures on record, but Ms Fentiman the it was improving when the lost time was averaged.

“Last quarter there were 15.3 lost minutes per ambulance, an improvement of one minute compared to the prior quarter,” Ms Fentiman said.

The opposition stresses “lost-time” data is an important metric that tracks ramping in Queensland hospitals but the government insists it is “not a published standard performance measure”.

“(The data) is an unofficial reporting metric that was developed for internal use to support in-house performance analysis and operational decision making,” Ms Fentiman said in government documents.

“The QAS recognises that it has previously provided this information on request of the Member, however, to avoid potential for confusion it is more appropriate to refer to the established standard measure of Patient Off Stretcher Time (POST) that is provided to Queensland Health and publicly available from the QAS website.”