A 92-year-old woman has been forced to wait outside the emergency department of a hospital in Adelaide's north for two hours during last night's cold weather.
Maureen Wortley's family called an ambulance for her after she fell just before a Mother's Day dinner last night.
Her daughter-in-law, Lili Csongrady, said they waited for an hour after calling an ambulance, before calling back and being told it would not arrive until 4am or 5am.
They then drove her to the Lyell McEwin Hospital, where she was told to wait outside after completing her rapid COVID-19 test.
She posted a photo of Ms Wortley's situation in response to a Facebook post by Premier Peter Malinauskas about Mother's Day.
"This photo was sent to me just now outside the hospital under a carport/triage at 12 degrees Celsius, as there is no room inside to wait for medical help," Ms Csongrady wrote.
She told ABC Radio Adelaide that Ms Wortley — the aunt of Labor MP Russell Wortley — waited for two hours outside because of confusion between staff about whether she had done a rapid antigen test and what the results were.
"She had already received her rapid test as soon as she arrived and then was left there to wait there for two hours," Ms Csongrady said.
"There were intern nurses that were then coming up not realising that she had a RAT done and then saying that she needed to have another one done multiple times."
Ambulance ramping was a key issue during the March state election, with Premier Peter Malinauskas and Labor promising to "fix the ramping crisis" mainly through hiring more paramedics.
While promising to look into Ms Wortley's situation "thoroughly", Mr Malinauskas said it was not clear if ramping was at play in her case or down to strict testing requirements for COVID-19.
"I don't know if this is a function of ramping from what I've been able to establish this morning, but let me just be clear from the outset to both Lili and her mother-in-law, Ms Wortley, that this is not consistent with the standard that we expect in a first world country," he said.
"Plain and simple, it's not good enough."
He said a $58 million upgrade was promised for the hospital in 2017 — also under Labor — but had not been completed.
Ms Wortley is still in hospital awaiting results from x-rays.
Divisional director of critical care at the hospital, Penny Conor, said she apologised to Ms Wortley and her family.
"There was no considerable risk to anyone … so I probably wouldn't describe it as a substantial stuff[-up], but yes, we could have done better," Dr Conor said.
She said changes would be made in response to the incident, including asking patients to wear N-95 masks instead of surgical masks and moving the triage practices inside to avoid the cold.
Dr Conor said an extra nurse would also be engaged to support the rapid antigen testing process.
She said the triaging process was done outside at the Lyell McEwin because of high COVID case numbers in the northern suburbs, paired with low vaccination rates.
"In our ICU now, we have more COVID patients than Flinders [Medical Centre] and the Royal Adelaide [Hospital] together," Dr Conor said.
Pledge to expand hospital in Boothby
The Lyell McEwin Hospital is in the safe federal Labor seat of Spence but, south of Adelaide, in the marginal Liberal seat of Boothby, federal Labor has announced $200 million to upgrade the Flinders Medical Centre if it wins the election.
The cost would be matched by the state government.
The money would fund an extra 100 beds and upgrade the hospital's emergency department.
The Premier said the pledge was significant.
"It is our second busiest hospital. It has the busiest emergency department in the state," he said.
The hospital's emergency department recently had a $40 million redevelopment under the former state government.
Mr Malinauskas said that did not go far enough.
"Unfortunately, the former state Liberal government's expansion of the Flinders Medical Centre was only to the emergency department, and then they closed beds behind the emergency department, resulting in no net increase in beds," he said.
"What we need here is a genuine increase in capacity."
The federal Liberal Party said it had not spoken to the state government about upgrading the hospital.
South Australian senator Simon Birmingham argued the promise showed the risks posed by a Labor government.
"If you're going to pay for this at the Flinders Medical Centre, then why wouldn't you pay for half of the cost of the Women's and Children's Hospital build?" he asked.
"Why wouldn't you pay for every other hospital project right around Australia? So that's the huge exposure that Anthony Albanese has opened up."
