Ambulance ramping continues to plague SA hospitals

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The Health Minister says the government is making progress on its pledge to fix ramping despite an increase in the number of hours lost last month. While there's been improvement at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and Flinders Medical Centre, the rise can largely be attributed to the Lyell McEwin in Adelaide's north.

Transcript

00:00 A fresh vision for Noolunga Hospital.

00:04 The mental health one is bigger isn't it because you've got more internal spaces.

00:09 The Health Minister revealing designs for a $74 million upgrade which will see 48 new

00:15 beds added to the site.

00:17 But an old problem continues to plague the government.

00:21 Ambulance ramping outside emergency departments increased last month.

00:25 We know that there's a long way to go and we know that we've got pressure on a number

00:28 of our hospitals including the northern suburbs.

00:31 More than 3,300 hours were lost to ramping in October.

00:35 It's down on the peak recorded in March this year of nearly 4,000 hours and it's also decreased

00:40 since October 2022.

00:43 But it's well above the highest month registered under the former government two years ago.

00:48 The facts show that South Australians are more likely to be ramped under this Labor

00:51 government than at any other point in our state's history.

00:55 We are throwing every single measure at this.

00:57 I think that they can see that we've stopped privatisations, we've stopped cuts, we've

01:02 stopped sacking nurses.

01:04 Ambulance response times also deteriorated month on month.

01:08 While ramping improved at Flinders in October, the head of the local health network warns

01:12 it could take until February or March to fully repair the infrastructure which knocked out

01:17 power at the hospital two and a half months ago.

01:20 This equipment needed to be manufactured, shipped with some additional manufacturing

01:27 here in Australia.

01:28 These are large pieces of kit.

01:30 A draft report into the incident has been complete and is expected to be made public

01:35 within weeks.

01:36 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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