Arabic version: النقابة تحذّر من رقم قياسي جديد لتكدّس سيارات الإسعاف في جنوب أستراليا

According to ABC News, South Australia’s ambulance employees union fears the state could record another high-ramping month after up to 16 ambulances were ramped at Lyell McEwin Hospital on the morning after the October long weekend. The union said multiple paramedics reported slow responses overnight to priority two and priority three patients.

Ambulance Employees Association general secretary Paul Ekkelboom said that, by 6am, there were 82 pending cases in the public. He said priority three cases were waiting from four to 20 hours. Priority three patients are expected to receive an ambulance response within 30 minutes. Mr Ekkelboom also said 10 priority two cases were pending during the night, with response times often failing to meet the 16-minute target.

The reports followed an incident a week earlier in which a non-verbal man with pneumonia was ramped at Lyell McEwin Hospital for nine hours while 130 patients were in the emergency department, where capacity is under 60. Mr Ekkelboom said ramping reduced ambulance availability and made it harder to respond within designated time frames.

Opposition health spokesperson Jack Batty said every metropolitan Adelaide hospital was under code white overnight, which he described as the most extreme capacity category and meaning hospitals were operating at or above 125 per cent capacity. A state government spokesperson said emergency departments were handling nearly 11,000 more presentations in the year to September than in the same period last year.

Premier Peter Malinauskas said the aged care crisis was contributing to ramping, with the hospital system approaching 600 aged care patients ready for discharge but without an aged care bed available. August recorded 5,891 ramping hours, the highest on record, while September recorded 5,507 hours.