00:00 Pictures shared on social media show Eddie smiling and enjoying outings organised through
00:07 his disability support provider. The 54-year-old was living in assisted accommodation at a
00:13 home in Adelaide's eastern suburbs, where flowers have now been left in his memory.
00:18 Eddie died last week while waiting 10 hours for an ambulance for abdominal pain and vomiting.
00:24 My thoughts are with the deceased and their next of kin and their family.
00:30 An ambulance should have arrived within an hour, but with high triple zero demand and
00:34 significant hospital ramping, other more urgent call outs were prioritised. As Eddie's symptoms
00:41 worsened, his case was changed to a priority one, but by then it was too late.
00:47 Eddie's support provider, Lighthouse Disability, said in a statement it didn't want to comment,
00:51 other than to say it was deeply saddened by the passing of one of its clients.
00:56 The Premier, elected in 2022 on a promise of fixing the ramping crisis, says the government
01:02 is getting on with the job by bringing 150 extra hospital beds online this year.
01:16 We have got a situation in our health care system that should make South Australians
01:22 extremely worried about the way our government is operating.
01:26 Overall, the government's goal of reaching a priority one patient within eight minutes
01:31 has seen major progress since Labor was elected, but the Premier still acknowledges Eddie was
01:37 a victim of the ramping crisis, with more questions about his case to be answered in
01:42 the review.
01:43 When the priority one call was made, the ambulance got there within four minutes. So that system
01:48 worked as it should. The question is, why wasn't that upgraded earlier and why was the
01:52 wait so long in the first instance? And that's what the investigation will look into.
01:56 An investigation South Australia's health system desperately needs.
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