In short:
The Ambulance Employees Association (AEA) says an 83-year-old woman was ramped in an ambulance for more than 12 hours outside the Royal Adelaide Hospital.
Union general secretary Leah Watkins says she is less confident ambulance ramping will be resolved in South Australia before the 2026 state election.
What’s next?
South Australia’s Health Minister Chris Picton says the state government remained on course to install hundreds of new hospital beds by the end of next year.
One of the government’s key backers ahead of the last SA election says it now has doubts the ramping crisis will be fixed in time for the 2026 poll, and claims an 83-year-old woman was ramped for more than 12 hours last night outside the Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH).
Ambulance Employees Association (AEA) general secretary Leah Watkins told ABC Radio Adelaide that ramping reached “crisis levels” about 5pm on Tuesday after seven mental health patients were left waiting for a bed at the RAH.
Ms Watkins said the emergency department was full.
“This poor elderly woman was kept on an ambulance stretcher, which are not particularly comfortable,” she said,” Ms Watkins said.
“[It] is just unbelievable.
“That is the longest I’ve ever heard of a patient being ramped for,” she told the media later on Wednesday.
In the weeks leading up to the last election, which was fought largely on health, the AEA ran a highly vocal public campaign — which has since been widely cited as one of the main factors in Labor’s victory — about the prevalence of ramping in SA.
Ms Watkins said she was now “less confident” than she was two years ago that ambulance ramping would improve before the 2026 state election.
“I felt like two years ago, we had four years to come at this and for the election commitments to start having an impact,” she said.
“I do understand that the vast majority of beds that they have committed to have not come online yet so I still hold out some hope, but there are hundreds of beds that still need to come online.
“Our entire membership is very concerned that the extra beds … are not going to be enough.”
Health Minister Chris Picton conceded the Central Adelaide Local Health Network (CALHN) — which is responsible for the RAH — was “under significant pressure last night”.
Mr Picton said he had spoken to the chair of the CALHN board about the matter.
“[I] certainly raised my concerns in terms of how that network’s going,” he said.
“We of course need to make sure our health networks and their boards are meeting the challenge and making sure that the resources lead to improved patient outcomes.”
‘It’s gone backwards by a magnitude’
Opposition leader David Speirs said the AEA had been “in cahoots” with the government before the last election, and that the union had left its own members feeling “betrayed”.
“Labor pretended they had a silver bullet — they were elected to office largely on that promise and it has just also fallen apart under their watch,” Mr Speirs told ABC Radio Adelaide.
“The government will not have fixed ramping, their central election promise — they know that now, they’re trying to change the goalposts, come up with different metrics.”
Mr Speirs said the campaign waged by the union prior to the last election had created an expectation that ramping would improve under Labor.
“It hasn’t improved at all. It’s gone backwards by a magnitude,” he said.
“Leah Watkins sanctioned the chalking of ambulances with all sorts of grave statements about the health system under the Liberals.
“I speak to a lot of paramedics day in, day out, who tell me how betrayed and let down they feel by their representative body but, more importantly, by the government.”
The health minister said there was a need for more federal assistance to reduce congestion and bed block in the state’s health system.
Mr Picton said the discharge of aged care and NDIS patients was often delayed by a lack of available support.
“On any daily basis, we’ve got about 200 patients who are stuck in hospital waiting for aged care or NDIS, and that means there are 200 beds taken up by somebody else in the system,” Mr Picton said.
“This is a national crisis that we’re facing in terms of people being stuck in our hospitals because they can’t get into federal aged care beds.
“We need action taken on a new national health reform agreement. Unfortunately the federal government have decided to put a halt to those negotiations — we think that’s a mistake.”
Mental health beds needed, doctors’ union says
In the May budget, the federal government committed $56 million to ease pressure on South Australia’s health system.
The bulk of that funding will go towards aged care, including measures to help patients “transition from hospital to community settings”.
In response to Mr Picton’s comments, a spokesperson for Health Minister Mark Butler said the federal government was committed to an agreement with states to ensure “hospitals, aged care, disability care and general practices are working more effectively together to get better outcomes”.
“For too long we’ve seen governments stuck in trench warfare playing the blame game on hospital funding,” the spokesperson said.
“It is crucial that the NDIS and disability reforms are further progressed in tandem with negotiations on hospital funding to allow for both agreements to be settled, and to improve outcomes for all Australians.”
Mr Picton said the state government remained on course to install hundreds of new hospital beds by the end of next year.
“Between now and the end of next year, we’ve got the equivalent of a whole new QEH [Queen Elizabeth Hospital] coming into the system,” Mr Picton said.
“We’ll have 330 extra beds that we will have brought online.”
South Australian Salaried Medical Officers Association (SASMOA) chief industrial officer Bernadette Mulholland said one of the most urgent priorities was the creation of forensic mental health beds, but said beds on their own would not be enough.
“If you’re looking at beds, you’ve got to look at staff, and I think we actually need to sit down and work out … how many beds do we need?” she said.
“Our membership is worried, we’re all worried, not just for the beds but for the staff that needs to come along with those beds.”