A man has died after waiting more than 10 hours for paramedics in Adelaide’s east, South Australia’s ambulance employees association (AEA) has alleged.
The 54-year-old SA man made a triple-zero call on 27 December, the same night a “code white” was declared for emergency departments across the city.
It meant all treatment rooms were being used, leading to ambulances becoming “ramped” outside hospitals and long delays in responses.
More than 10 hours after making the call, the man died in Hectorville without the arrival of care, following abdominal pain and vomiting, the union alleged.
A video posted by the ambulance employees association to X, formerly Twitter, showed at least 10 vehicles waiting outside the Royal Adelaide hospital on the same evening.
On 27 Dec there was significant ramping across Adelaide. Tragically a 54 yo male in Hectorville passed away after waiting >10hrs for an ambulance to arrive. This highlights the upmost importance of EDs clearing ramped ambulances to respond to the community 💔.
— Ambulance Employees Association (SA) (@aeasa1981) January 4, 2024
🎥 RAH: 10pm 27/12 pic.twitter.com/PrlKPwf3HQ
The AEA industrial officer Josh Karpowicz said the man’s death was a “stark reminder” that when ambulances are ramped at hospitals, patients waiting for help are left without care for “unacceptably and dangerously long periods of time”.
“Ramping takes ambulances off-road and puts patients at risk of deterioration in an environment where there is no one available to help them,” Karpowicz said.
“If ramping continues at these unacceptably high levels, we will not see improvement in ambulance response times and patients in the community will be put at risk.”
The SA ambulance service chief executive, Rob Elliott, said the extended delay in transporting the patient had a “tragic outcome”.
He said an internal review had been launched into the man’s death, including procedures for phone calls to patients experiencing ambulance delays.
“Our hearts go out to the family and friends of the patient,” he said. “This is not the standard of service we want to provide.
“On the night we were experiencing extremely high triple zero demands … we had to prioritise higher acuity calls.”
The man was initially listed as a priority five, which the union said should have resulted in an ambulance arriving within 60 minutes.
But after 10 hours his condition deteriorated and a subsequent triple-zero call resulted in him being bumped up to a priority one.
Elliott said three calls were made between the patient and dispatchers on the night, and ambulance crews responded within four minutes after the priority was increased.
Ambulance ramping was a key issue that helped propel Labor to power at the 2022 state election.
In December, 3,595 hours of ambulance availability were lost to ramping across Adelaide – a slight decline from the 4,285 hours lost in the previous month.
SA Health’s department for health and wellbeing chief executive, Dr Robyn Lawrence, said 76.2% of “priority one” incidents were responded to within the target timeframe of eight minutes in December, the best rate since early 2020.
For priority two call-outs in metropolitan Adelaide, 64.5% arrived within their target of 16 minutes.
“We know how important it is to improve capacity and flow in hospitals so ambulances can be released to respond to patients in the community,” Lawrence said.
“We will continue to do everything we possibly can to in partnership with our staff, the community and unions to build new beds, hire more doctors and nurses and be more efficient.”
Claims ambulance patients were being fast-tracked into emergency rooms over waiting room patients to reduce ramping statistics prompted the government to launch a clinical review in December.
An agreement reached between the union and state government the same month required improved working conditions regarding meal brakes, overtime, fatiguing rosters and addressing ongoing health and safety concerns.
The union said high ramping levels and the man’s death demonstrated that despite the government’s commitments, patients in the community were being put at risk because of delayed transfers of care.
They said while response times had been steadily improving since the state election in 2022 with increased resourcing, they would not further improve until there was a significant reduction in ramping.
A live tracker of Adelaide’s public emergency departments, run on X by the South Australian Salaried Medical Officers Association (Sasmoa), has been warning SA Heath to urgently address shortages.
On 4 January, there were more than a dozen people waiting up to 24 hours for a bed in hospitals across the city.
With Australian Associated Press
