The union for healthcare and laundry workers says a linen shortage is leading to hospital beds being unable to be used in South Australia.
But the state's health minister said the problem was on its way to being solved.
United Workers Union South Australian public sector coordinator Kimberley Rowney said the state's hospitals were running out of linen sheets for hospital beds.
She said she had been told of only five sets of sheets being available for up to 28 beds in a ward and "when there is no linen there can be no beds".
"That's dire," she told ABC Radio Adelaide's Stacey Lee and Nikolai Beilharz.
Ms Rowney said other sectors that used sheets — like hotels — were also affected but public health systems could not compete for price.
"Often what happens with government contracts, it's cheapest gets the contract," she said.
"So, when other businesses are paying more and there's a hold-up on the supply, it's the businesses who pay more that get the supply and unfortunately South Australian hospitals just go to the back of the queue."
Health Minister Chris Picton said there were issues in hospitals last week, but they were already being addressed by the time a worker at the Flinders Medical Centre informed him personally about the problem on the weekend.
This included by making sure sheets were shared between wards so they all had the minimum required, he said.
"We've done a lot of work try to address that in the past few days and we're confident that supplies have increased substantially, and I'm advised that the supplier at their own cost have put in an additional $300,000 worth of linen into the system," Mr Picton said.
Union calls for end to outsourcing
The union said the long-term solution to the problem was reversing the outsourcing of linen services, which started with the sale of the Central Linen Service in 1999, and continued under the Labor government in its previous term that ended in 2018.
"What we're calling on the government to do is to step up and find a solution for this, because offloading the linen services right now just means the public is paying the ultimate price," Ms Rowney said.
Mr Picton said Labor had promised ahead of the election to review government outsourcing, but linen might be "difficult".
"That's something we'll be reviewing I expect over the course of this year, because I think clearly we see time and time again with privatisation that people promise the world and that doesn't always materialise in terms of what the outcome is or the cost at the end of the day," he said.
Ambulance waiting worst in Australia
A Productivity Commission Report on Government Services released today has found ambulance waiting times doubled in South Australia between 2021 and 2022.
The report showed ambulance response times blew out to 71 minutes for the 10 per cent of metropolitan patients who waited the longest — the worst on average nationally.
That compared with more than 30 minutes recorded in 2020–2021.
Mr Picton said the report was an indictment against the previous Liberal government.
"I mean, while they might like to point to COVID as being the reason for that, all states had to combat COVID and the ambulance response times here got far worse than anywhere else in the country," he said.
The opposition says the state government should take responsibility for current ramping statistics rather than criticising the previous government.
Ramping impacts ambulance waiting times because the ambulances are outside hospital emergency departments rather than on the road.
The number of hours lost to ramping each month is worse under Labor than it was before the March 2022, state election despite the party promising to "fix the ramping crisis".
"South Australians want a government focused on delivering for them, not a government full of mealy-mouthed excuses," opposition health spokeswoman Ashton Hurn said in a statement.
Meanwhile, the annual Report on Government Services found Australians are spending longer on average in emergency departments when they visit.
All states and territories recorded a rise in waiting times last financial year compared with 2013-14. Only 48 per cent of patients were treated within the waiting time national benchmark in 2021-22.
