Ambulance ramping completely unacceptable

Subject: Ambulance ramping and health system

SARAH ABO:   Well, alarming figures this morning concerning the state of Australia's health system, with ambulance ramping blowing out to almost eight hours.

CHARLES CROUCHER:   For more, let's bring in AMA Queensland President Dr Maria Boulton in Brisbane. Doctor, good morning. Thank you for being with us. Eight hours waiting for a hospital bed, that is just not good enough, is it?

DR MARIA BOULTON:   No, it isn't, and we're hearing that patients have been waiting more than that to get into a hospital bed. We're hearing stories of patients waiting longer than 24 hours, 48 hours in some hospitals to get a mental health bed. It is crazy. This is a sign that the system is under pressure and it's been under pressure for such a long time now. This started before COVID and we need to stop using COVID as an excuse. The only reason we're doing as well as we're doing is because of the amazing work that healthcare workers are doing, but the system's breaking and it cannot go on because we're seeing patients suffer now.

SARAH ABO:   Well, I think that's the most frustrating thing that you point out there, Maria. Too often we're hearing politicians blame COVID for these blowouts. As you've said, it's been around for years now and 24 hours, 48 hours is completely unacceptable. Why aren't we doing enough? People are dying.

DR MARIA BOULTON:   It's completely unacceptable. What's happening is that there's not enough hospital beds so then an emergency patient can't move on to a hospital bed which means that when an ambulance comes, they can't offload their patient onto an emergency bed so ambulance patients are waiting on stretchers or waiting on ambulances and doctors are having to care for patients on those stretchers and in those ambulances.

Then that means that those ambulances aren't free to go and do what they do, which is help people out in the community. That is why we're seeing all these adverse outcomes which is terrifying. I guess it's time for, we're hearing a lot of blame between the federal and the state government. What we need them to do is that we need them to both step up. We need the federal government to fund our hospitals more. We've been calling for that for some time now, but we also need our state government to look at some urgent solutions. We need urgent beds and we need urgent staff, so we need more doctors and we need more nurses and we needed them yesterday.

CHARLES CROUCHER:   I know we've been saying it for what feels like months now. This data was at the height of the state's third Omicron wave and that terrible flu season. Is anything better now? Are things any better at the moment as we speak?

DR MARIA BOULTON:   No, sadly it isn't. We rang around some of our members who work in emergency departments across hospitals in Queensland and things haven't improved. They're still seeing people who are quite unwell with COVID. We're still having deaths from COVID. The issue is that we're still getting people who are unfortunately having to wait in ambulances and having to wait in emergency departments for too long. These people are people who are really unwell. They're not people that can go to their GP. They are people that need hospital care and that is why we need our hospital system to be reformed so that we can continue to care for those patients.

SARAH ABO:   Doctor, obviously you've had first-hand experience with patients. We know about this petty bickering between the feds and the states, as you pointed out earlier. What do you think we actually need to do because the solution is wanting it seems, but it's necessary?

DR MARIA BOULTON:   It's been necessary for some time now. AMA Queensland did provide some recommendations to the state government through our ambulance Ramping Roundtable. Some of those recommendations have been taken up. For example, an extra 2,500 new beds coming in the next six years, but that's going to take six years. What we're hearing from our emergency colleagues, they need staff and they need them right now because they are all so fatigued. They're all working when they're sick, by telehealth. They're all coming in when they're meant to be having days off. Our junior doctors aren't getting the training that they're meant to be getting because they're too busy being used as workforce.

But we also know that the federal government does need to listen and they do need to step up and give us some more funding as well.

CHARLES CROUCHER:   Well, as you say, it should have been fixed and it should have been fixed yesterday. Doctor, thanks so much for being with us.