South Australia’s paramedics are spending too much time caring for patients while they wait to transfer them into the care of hospital Emergency Department (ED) staff according to a new report from the Australian Medical Association (AMA).
Releasing the Ambulance Ramping Report Card 2022, President of the AMA, Omar Khorshid said South Australia, along with every State and Territory across the country, had fallen short of its performance targets for the time it took to transfer patients from an ambulance into the care of the ED.
Dr Khorshid said the Report Card was the first time a national snapshot of ambulance ramping – the practice of requiring paramedics to continue to care for patients rather than hand over clinical responsibility to the ED – had been published by the AMA.
“Ambulance ramping outside hospitals – sometimes for hours – means not only are patients not receiving timely care, but paramedics can’t respond to new emergencies,” he said.
Dr Khorshid said the Report Card showed South Australia had a target of 90 per cent of patients being transferred to the ED within 30 minutes, but in 2020-21 only 54.1 per cent of patients were transferred within the target timeframe, a change of -9.7 per cent on the previous year.
“I want to be clear, we’re not saying ambulance ramping is the fault of our incredible paramedics and ambulance staff or our overstretched Emergency Department workers,” he said.
“This is a hospital logjam issue pure and simple, caused by a lack of public hospital capacity.
“Our paramedics and ambulance staff deserve better than spending hours ramped outside hospitals, as do their patients.”
The AMA’s seven-page Report Card can be downloaded from this PS News link.
