There were no ambulances for 17 high-priority emergencies in Adelaide’s southern suburbs last night, putting patients at “high clinical risk”, according to the paramedics union.

Key points:

  • Paramedics have posted videos about ramping and a patient surge overnight
  • Their union has called for more hospital beds
  • The Premier says the situation is improving

The Ambulance Employees’ Association says the ambulances needed were tied up ramping at hospitals.

It has called on the South Australian government to fund more hospital beds to fix the problem.

Two separate paramedics recorded video of the SA Ambulance Service radio operator naming the 17 outstanding cases to show the pressure on the system.

A paramedic called Ash recorded a video of herself after a 13-hour overnight shift describing the conditions she was working under.

“At the start of the shift, there was 17 uncovered emergencies just in the southern region alone and that number fluctuated throughout the whole night,” she said.

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“There was always an uncovered emergency in the community somewhere.

“Ramping was horrendous — the worst time that I’m aware of on the ramp was five hours.

“Flinders [Medical Centre] had part of their ED (emergency department) closed, purely just due to lack of staff.

Call for more beds

The union’s acting state secretary, Josh Karpowicz, said one patient waited nearly an hour while experiencing stroke symptoms while another with chest pain waited more than 90 minutes for an ambulance.

He said that “presents an extremely high clinical risk to the patient”.

“The solutions are clear: there needs to be an immediate and substantial increase to ambulance resourcing and in-patient bed capacity across the state,” he said.

“Until the Marshall Liberal government resolves these core capacity issues, we will continue to see ramping and delayed ambulance responses in the community.”

Paramedics have been running a “chalking” campaign of putting messages on ambulances.(

ABC South East SA: Sandra Morello

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In June, Premier Steven Marshall said the state budget would “definitely” fix South Australia’s ramping crisis and it would happen “almost immediately”.

The budget outlined plans for the new Women’s and Children’s hospital and extra investment in mental health facilities.

“It’s going to definitely fix ramping,” he said.

“… This budget will do everything it possibly can to fix the broken system left by Labor.”

Similar to interstate surges

Today, Mr Marshall said there was simply an unusual surge in patients overnight.

“In fact, we see them right around the country — right around the world — dealing with this coronavirus pandemic.

“The difference here in South Australia is we’ve already got a program which is worth more than $1 billion upgrading our emergency departments across South Australia and in addition to that looking at different pathways for faster treatment.”

Some of the worst ramping overnight was at the Flinders Medical Centre.(

ABC News: Leah MacLennan

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Nearly 3,000 hours were lost to ramping in May, followed by lower figures in June and July, according to figures released in August.

“We’ve seen it ease but it’s nowhere near where we want it to be,” the Premier said.

“We want to end ramping in South Australia.

“We’re making a massive investment in hospital infrastructure in South Australia to facilitate that but we’re also making beds available.”

He pointed to an announcement last week of 30 new hospital beds at the Repat Health Precinct for people with disabilities.

The Flinders Medical Centre emergency department expanded from 56 to 86 treatment spaces last month.