Ambulance ramping ramps up under new South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas

Just six months after surging to victory on a promise of fixing ambulance ramping, the SA Labor government has presided over the four highest months of ramping ever recorded.

Sick South Australians now spending almost 4000 hours per month waiting in ambulances to be treated inside a hospital

Just six months after surging to victory on a promise of fixing ­ambulance ramping, the South Australian Labor government has presided over the four highest months of ramping ever recorded in the state’s history.

The No.1 issue which new Premier Peter Malinauskas pledged to tackle is worse than ever, with sick South Australians now spending almost 4000 hours per month waiting in ambulances to be treated inside a hospital.

Health Minister Chris Picton told The Australian the figures are “not acceptable” but added that Labor remains committed to ­honouring its promise to return ramping to 2018 levels by the next SA election in 2026.

However, he gave no guarantees the surge in ramping would end any time soon, saying it would take time for Labor to honour its promise to create 550 new beds in the public hospital system and recruit more doctors and nurses.

Labor’s primary commitment ahead of the March 19 poll was to reverse the explosion in ramping which helped render Steven Marshall a one-term premier.

The party ran an aggressive campaign against the Liberals’ proposed $662m Adelaide Entertainment Centre and pledged to redirect the funds towards the health system and a new CBD ambulance headquarters.

It also worked alongside the Ambulances Employees Association, with the union running a slick campaign fronted by a young female paramedic known as “Ash the Ambo” telling South Australians to “vote like your life depends on it”.

On the Liberals’ watch, ramping hit a new high in May last year of 2800 hours and remained around that level through winter before hitting another new record of 2868 hours in October.

But the figures recorded since the election of the Malinauskas government vastly outstrip anything that happened during the four-year life of the Marshall ­government. In the past four months, ramping figures stood at 3412 hours in May, 3838 hours in June, 3647 hours in July, and 3763 hours in August.

With Mr Malinauskas now under pressure over his promise, he is insisting he never pledged to end ramping completely but rather return it to 2018 levels within his first four years of office.

Premier Peter Malinauskas’ primary commitment ahead of the March 19 South Australian election was to reverse the explosion in ambulance ramping. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

Labor’s pre-election advertising was less nuanced, with posters distributed across the state during the campaign promising simply “Labor will fix ramping”.

While the state’s ambulance union is remaining loyally subdued on hospital crowding figures, other health unions are becoming vocal about the numbers. The immediate past president of the Salaried Medical Officers Association David Pope vented on Twitter last month, writing: “There has never been this level of despair among all levels of SA Health emergency department staff before. Colleagues in tears most shifts as emergency care is not able to be delivered to people who need it.”

Mr Picton said he understood the concerns of medicos and the community amid recent cases where an elderly woman waited 2½ hours to be treated and a man in his 50s died while waiting for an ambulance after suffering a heart attack.

“We absolutely and completely agree that the situation is not acceptable,” Mr Picton said.

“People should not be waiting that long to get into emergency departments. It’s a factor of blockages in the system and the demand on the system.”

The minister said a big factor in the increase was the lack of GPs, which was affecting the hospital system at both ends.

Opposition health spokeswoman Ashton Hurn disagreed with Mr Picton, calling the ramping figures “a complete betrayal of South Australian voters”.

“Let’s be under no illusion here – there are thousands of people who voted for a change of government purely on the ramping issue which Labor prosecuted so aggressively throughout the campaign,” Ms Hurn said. “This is the biggest example of over-promising and underdelivering South Australian voters have ever seen.

“We had our problems in government with ramping and were trying to fix it, and we were fixing it. But Labor said they would fix it – and what’s happened in the past four months is far and away the worst level of ramping the state has ever seen. This is their problem now. It was their promise and they have to own it.”