00:02Suzanne took her daughter Isabella to hospital after unexplained pain and vomiting last month.
00:08It's such a desperate situation where at 2 o'clock in the morning there's no other choice to seek medical
00:14attention except go to a public hospital.
00:17After a 12 hour wait in Sir Charles Gardner Hospital she says they were sent home.
00:22But her daughter's condition didn't improve and they were back in the ED five days later.
00:27This time she says waiting for 15 hours.
00:31I was worried that if she got worse do we come back and start all over again, get back in
00:36line.
00:37She wasn't alone in experiencing a long wait last month.
00:41St John WA data showing ambulances waited more than 6,600 hours outside hospitals last month.
00:48It's the highest monthly figure this year but still 400 hours less ramping than last year.
00:54This is patients waiting in pain, this is our healthcare workers doing more with less.
01:01The state government says it's encouraged by the figures at a time of rising demand.
01:06When you put in place a detailed plan like we did this year, this winter as part of our winter
01:11strategy, it did make some inroads but there's always more work to do.
01:15We can't afford to have 6,000 plus hours of ramping in a month.
01:19We need to find a way of making our health sector accessible for those people who are in emergency state.
01:25A major cause of the gridlock is the 429 older patients in WA hospitals waiting for aged care.
01:31It's not a good place for them to be and it's 400 beds that we could use otherwise for sick
01:36West Australians who are then causing people to have to wait in ambulances out the front of emergency departments.
01:41This is not acceptable.
01:42Ten years of neglect and we find ourselves in this position.
01:46It is not good enough in a state that the Premier and Deputy Premier tell us is the wealthiest state
01:52in the nation.
01:54The AMA warns the aged care problem is only getting worse, urging more investment in infrastructure and aged care packages
02:02which it says are desperately needed.
