Ramping Qld: Health Minister and emergency department heads to meet after spate of tragedies

Queensland’s Health Minister will meet with the heads of emergency departments today as ramping horror stories continue to emerge. But the state opposition says the meeting is a case of deja vu.

• ‘Gaslit’: Ambo anger over patient’s wait

The heads of Queensland’s emergency departments will meet with Health Minister Shannon Fentiman on Friday after a spate of ambulance ramping-related tragedies in the state’s South East, in a bid to hash out what more can be done to ease the situation.

Delays transferring patients from ambulances to hospital beds have been particularly pronounced at Ipswich Hospital, where Wayne Irving, 67, last week died while being transferred from a stretcher after waiting three hours in an ambulance.

A significant surge in demand for paramedics at the weekend also led to resources being stuck at the hospital and unable to get back out to help those in need – a possible factor in an ambulance not being dispatched to Forest Lake resident Cath Groom, 51, who died at the weekend.

But the LNP has asked what happened to the recommendations from a ramping roundtable held in March 2021 with former health minister Yvette D’Ath.

“The chaos and crisis of the Labor Government has seen ambulance ramping rise from 15 per cent to the worst in the nation at 43 per cent,” an Opposition spokesman said.

“Have they even actioned the recommendations from their ramping roundtable from over two years ago?”

West Moreton Hospital and Health Service revealed its facilities had been “unusually busy this month” – with a 4 per cent increase compared to last year – with chief executive Hannah Bloch affirming clinicians were “working tirelessly” to treat every patient.

Mr Irving’s daughter Lauren Hansford said her confidence in the health system had been shattered.

Queensland Health Minister Shannon Fentiman. Picture David Clark

Standing alongside Opposition Leader David Crisafulli in Ipswich, Ms Hansford called for the government to make real change or make way for someone who would.

“We have a system that is broken. And it needs to get fixed,” she said.

“Don’t just say you’re going to make a change, do it.

“Actions speak way, way louder than words.”

Ramping issues persist at Ipswich Hospital, with father-of-two Joe Horvat, 25, stuck between the ambulance and full hospital care for more than three hours on Thursday – and doctors ultimately finding a blood clot in his lungs.

Mr Horvat, who has an auto-immune illness known as lupus, has an extensive medical history including 13 collapsed lungs in three years. “If they had put me in the waiting room, without the attention of paramedics, who knows what would have happened. The paramedics in that case really fought for me,” he said.

Ms Bloch said the care Mr Horvat received was “timely and clinically appropriate”.

Ms Fentiman confirmed she was bringing together all the heads of emergency departments on Friday to look at what more could be done in light of a “really tough couple of weeks” brought on by a heatwave and increased cases of Covid-19.

She said the government was “doing everything we can to tackle ambulance ramping” and while there had been some improvement in the past few months there was “so much more to do”.

Mr Crisafulli said the government needed to be “honest about where they are at”.

“I always use ambulance ramping as the barometer for how sick the system is,” he said. “Ambulance ramping was 15 per cent eight years ago, and it has deteriorated every single year and now it’s at 43 per cent.”