Ambulance ramping ‘particularly bad’ at Ballarat Base Hospital as patient waits 13 hours for bed

A patient with serious respiratory issues waited 26 times longer than recommended in an ambulance outside a Ballarat hospital during a horror night for the city’s health system.

A ramped ambulance at Ballarat Base Hospital's emergency department intake on Tuesday.

An emergency patient suffering a respiratory condition was forced to spend 13 hours waiting for a bed at one of Victoria’s largest hospitals when they should have been taken out of paramedics’ care within half an hour.

It is the latest example of extensive ‘ramping’ at Ballarat’s public hospital, with the issue continuing to plague paramedics and sick people throughout the state.

It also occurred while Ballarat’s private hospital, St John of God, was in the midst of a network outage that shuttered its own emergency department to new arrivals.

Just before 8pm on Saturday, St John of God published a notice on social media advising that its phones were down, and calls to the hospital could not be received.

As a result, it put its emergency department and maternity unit on “bypass”, meaning no new admissions could be accepted.

St John of God Hospital in Ballarat. Picture: Contributed

By Sunday afternoon, the maternity unit was back functioning as normal, but it was not until about noon Monday that the hospital declared its emergency department restored.

St John of God chief executive Maria Noonan said the outage “temporarily impacted a number of internal systems and services”.

A review of what occurred is now underway, with a hospital spokesman confirming it was not a cyber attack.

Meanwhile, overnight on Sunday an ambulance crew was ramped at Ballarat Base Hospital for 13 hours – nearly a full night shift.

When an ambulance is ramped, paramedics care for their patient – often in the hospital’s corridors – until a bed becomes available inside.

The ramped patient on Sunday had a respiratory illness classified as category three, meaning they are supposed to be handed over to the hospital within 30 minutes.

During the day on Monday, some crews were ramped for five hours.

Ballarat Base Hospital’s emergency department.

Victorian Ambulance Union secretary Danny Hill said ramping at Ballarat had been “particularly bad”, notwithstanding the recent issues at St John of God.

“There’s a whole host of factors that can affect a hospital’s ability to suddenly take patients, particularly in an ED,” he said.

“But our members have been raising issues about ambulance ramping in Ballarat for quite some time.”

He said more staff were needed to take patients off paramedics’ hands so they could do their jobs.

“No one’s saying that (hospital staff) aren’t overworked, but it doesn’t justify taking ambulances off the road,” Mr Hill said.

“The ambos don’t work for the hospital – they work for the ambulance service and they have a job to do out there on the road.”

Victorian Ambulance Union secretary Danny Hill.

A Grampians Health spokeswoman said Ballarat Base Hospital’s emergency department was experiencing high demand due to “a rise in winter illness, staffing pressures and other general ailments”.

“The recent closure of St John of God Hospital’s ED has also contributed to increased demand,” she said.

“All patients presenting to our ED (via ambulance or through the front door) are triaged carefully and those who are most unwell will be seen to first.”

People who do not need emergency care were urged to consider the Victorian Virtual Emergency Department online or Ballarat’s UFS Urgent Care Clinic.