8 September 2020
South Australia recorded its worst-ever August record for the number of hours patients waited outside hospitals, according to news reports, with ambulances ramped for 1,700 hours - a 45% increase in one month.
The reports follow a leaked internal SA Ambulance Service risk analysis warning of potential patient death due to a “deteriorating” ability of the state’s ambulance service to meet demand.
According to The Advertiser, the report cites an inability to secure funding to increase resources, insufficient resourcing to meet demand and ineffective patient flow among risks raising potential for increased “morbidity and mortality” due to “declining response times”.
“Increasing demand on ambulance services and increased time to transfer patients to Emergency Departments have contributed to reduced capacity and declining response times for less urgent cases,” the report says.
Ramping at hospitals will inevitably result in preventable deaths or harm to patients unless the problem is urgently addressed, the ANMF (SA Branch) has warned.
“Hospital overcapacity and lack of available ambulances poses an alarming and unacceptable life-threatening risk to members of the community,’’ said ANMF (SA Branch) CEO/Secretary Adj Associate Professor Elizabeth Dabars AM.
“We are also deeply concerned at the number of mental health patients being housed ad hoc in emergency departments for long periods of time’’.
The ANMF (SA Branch) has called on all Local Health Networks to produce plans and implement measures that ensure that all people presenting to emergency departments are treated and either discharged or transferred to other more appropriate places of care within the target times.
We also reaffirm our position that internal and external ramping are measures that should not exist systemically and are a product of inadequate service provision, both within hospitals and more broadly in the health and associated systems.
“ANMF (SA Branch) members should seek to escalate issues of overcapacity and ramping to hospital management to ensure staff are provided to meet demand. They should report to us where staff is refused to maintain agreed ratios,’’ Ms Dabars said.