At least 20 Queenslanders die as paramedics held up by health system in crisis
At least 20 Queenslanders have tragically died in cases where paramedics under ‘extreme pressure’ took too long to respond. But Health Minister Yvette D’Ath has today said it’s “not fair” to make any links.
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Reducing ambulance wait times in Queensland will “take some time” and “effort across the whole of the health sector” Health Minister Yvette D’Ath has said, amid revelations at least 20 people have died in cases where paramedics under “extreme pressure” took too long to respond.
Speaking on Sunday after The Sunday Mail’s report of explosive internal Queensland Ambulance Service documents, Ms D’Ath said every death was “sad and tragic” but needed to be framed against the context of 1.8 million call outs Queensland Ambulance responded to between January 2021 and April 2022.
A comprehensive look at QAS “Significant Incident Reviews”, obtained by the state LNP through right-to-information, revealed at least 20 people died and seven had to be revived with most cases referring to “extreme hospital delays” for why paramedics were delayed.
Ms D’Ath, speaking at a sod turning for a satellite hospital in Kallangur, said none of the deaths were “directly” linked to ambulance delays.
She said it was “not fair” to the QAS to link ambulance delays as a factor behind someone’s death, because the public would read that as it “contributed to that person’s death”.
Health experts have warned ambulance delays were only a “symptom” of a health system under severe duress from a lack of planning and funding from authorities spanning years.
The Australian College of Emergency Medicine and the Australian Medical Association of Queensland are in agreement authorities need to look at the bigger health picture and implement a whole of system fix, including modernising the way it works.
Ms D’Ath said she acknowledged the health system was “under incredible pressure”.
“Of course we want to see the wait times brought down but that is going to take some time, and it’s going to take effort across the whole of the health sector and external stakeholders as well and all levels of government to help make that happen,” she said.
OVERNIGHT: 20 deaths in 16 horror months: Qld’s secret triple-0 files exposed
At least 20 Queenslanders have tragically died and seven people needed to be revived in cases where paramedics under “extreme pressure” took too long to respond due to hospital ramping and surging workloads.
Explosive internal Queensland Ambulance Service documents have revealed a 16-month snapshot of the shocking toll of the state’s health crisis, including hundreds of hours collectively being wasted each day because paramedics are stuck at overloaded hospitals.
The devastating deaths logged between January 2021 and April 2022 included the case of a 69-year-old woman who died in the nine hours and 16 minutes it took paramedics to arrive, despite six triple-0 calls being made.
In another case four ambulances were sent to a woman who had fallen and hit her head in Bethania, but each was diverted to a higher-priority case before paramedics finally got to her 3½ hours later.
She died later that day, and the QAS report found the “delayed response resulted from impacts on paramedic availability due to Metro South HHS workload, staffing and hospital delay pressures”.
On February 15, 2021, there were “extreme demands for service” and QAS paramedics lost a collective 186 hours – or nearly eight days – waiting on hospital ramps.
A suicidal woman in Indooroopilly had called for help that day, and in the two hours and 23 minutes before paramedics arrived she took her life.
But the statewide impact of Queensland’s stretched ambulance service remains unclear as the internal documents, obtained by the state LNP through right-to-information, cover only the South East region.
A further 119 pages have been redacted due to ongoing coroner investigations.
Health experts, including the Australian Medical Association Queensland and the Australian College of Emergency Medicine, warned that ambulance delays were only a “symptom” of a health system under severe duress from a lack of planning and funding from authorities spanning years.
QAS Assistant Commissioner David Hartley said the service would never walk away from a mistake or when things could have been done better.
However, he asserted no audit or coroner’s report had ever found “system-wide” issues within the organisation.
The QAS Significant Incident Review files show paramedics were often faced with “extreme hospital delays”, including dozens of ambulances banked up waiting at hospitals across the South East for hours – in one instance clocking in a ramp time of six hours and 50 minutes.
Growing demand for paramedic help and workforce shortages were also highlighted as factors behind delays or when errors were made.
On July 9, 2021, an elderly woman’s heart gave out in an ambulance an hour into waiting to get into Gold Coast University Hospital.
Ten ambulances were already ramped when paramedics taking care of her joined the queue. There were 102 patients in the emergency department of GCUH that night, with 21 waiting to be seen.
On September 13, 2021, a Buderim grandmother later found to have suffered a stroke waited 90 minutes for paramedics to arrive. She died four days later in hospital.
The dispatcher in Maroochydore was forced to work solo after 11pm that night, and was the only one able to log critical health information, despite the site facing a “very high” demand of 492 calls in a 24-hour period.
The staggering demand for QAS assistance included instances where top-priority “Code 1” cases and dozens of high-priority “Code 2” calls for help were forced to wait hours for paramedics to arrive.
In a one hour and 15 minute window on December 16, 2021, an average of 26 ambulances were ramped at hospitals across Brisbane, Logan and Ipswich, and a “high demand” for service meant people in the QAS priority queue were waiting for up to five hours.
That day it took paramedics 1½ hours to reach a man who had cuts to his hands and arms. He was found “kneeling on the floor hunched over a bathtub unconscious, unresponsive, and pulseless”.
On May 4, 2021, demand was so high that a Code 2 case, of the 42 banked up, had been pending for six hours and 28 minutes.
An intoxicated man having a mental health episode and punching himself in the head died of a heart attack next to this bed that day after waiting eight hours and 42 minutes for paramedics to arrive. When triple-0 was first called there had been 60 ambulances waiting across Brisbane’s seven hospitals, with 43 of those ramped – the longest for three hours and two minutes.
Health Minister Yvette D’Ath said there had been “no findings that the length of response time has directly attributed to the death of a patient”.
Opposition Leader David Crisafulli said the 535-page QAS dossier was the “most heartbreaking collection of documents” he had read, and it was incomprehensible that this was happening in “modern Queensland”.
AMAQ president Maria Boulton said research had shown that a system in strain, such as Queensland’s health system, could only operate under stress for so long before “adverse outcomes start happening”.
“Which is what you are seeing, basically, with these tragedies,” she said.
The QAS’s Mr Hartley said ambulance ramping was a “challenging” issue happening globally that created “some pressures through the system” which paramedics had to work through.
He said the significant incident reviews, an internal audit process used to ensure the QAS was always improving, needed to be viewed against the backdrop of 1.8 million calls for service completed in the same time frame.
“Certainly we acknowledge that people are human and people do make mistakes and we do have to provide some follow-up education from time to time,” he said.
“But in the majority of the reviews that we’ve done, there’s been absolutely no issue to be found.”
Ms D’Ath, referring to a statement made in parliament in August, said some of the cases were “heartbreaking” and that “the reality is there are enormous pressures facing our health system”.
“Unfortunately, due to the nature of cases QAS respond to or the nature of their illness or injuries, people sometimes pass away prior to receiving care, during care or after the discharge of care from the QAS,” she said.
But Mr Crisafulli said every Queenslander and their family affected by ambulance delays were “owed answers by the state government”.
“You can feel the trauma in the unanswered calls as loved ones die in the arms of family members, you can feel the frustration of paramedics stuck at the end of a ramp for an entire shift while cries for help go unanswered,” he said.
“You can feel the sense of hopelessness with the Queensland health crisis.”
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Originally published as At least 20 Queenslanders die as paramedics held up by health system in crisis
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