Ambulance ramping the worst it's ever been in South Australia

Ambulance ramping has hit its highest ever level in South Australia, at five-and-a-half thousand hours in the month of July.

Transcript

00:00South Australia's public hospitals have been at breaking point for weeks amid surging winter

00:06demand and ramping has hit an all time high.

00:09At this point there is clearly no way that the government can turn this around in time

00:14for the next election as originally hoped.

00:18The union that campaigned for Labor to take office and fix the ramping crisis now despairing

00:23over the depth of the problem.

00:25And this morning we've had a priority two patient ramped for two to three hours in the

00:31airlock of Flinders Medical Centre.

00:34In July ambulances spent more than 5,500 hours stuck on ramps, up from 3,700 hours in June

00:42and well above the previous all time high of 4,700 hours ramped.

00:47Right now we have 273 patients stuck in our hospital system who no longer need to be in

00:55hospital but we can't get them out to aged care and NDIS care in the community.

01:00The state government and the union are calling for more federal support in those areas while

01:04the state boosts its own resources.

01:06They hope 70 new beds at Hampstead Rehabilitation Centre to be used by older patients will also

01:12help free up space.

01:14We are putting in more and more and more beds.

01:17We are building a bigger health system to meet this demand.

01:20By the end of next year we will have over 330 extra beds coming into the system.

01:26SA Health's code yellow state of emergency that's seen elective surgeries cancelled is

01:31expected to be lifted in the middle of this month.