By NICOLE VALICEK
NEW figures show ambulance transfer times at Western Hospital have more than doubled in the past three years.
According to the new figures obtained under Freedom of Information laws, the average monthly hours of ambulance ramping at Western Hospital in 2009/10 was 307 and in 2012/13 the hours rose to 636, an increase of 329 hours.
Western Health’s executive director of operations, Russell Harrison, said ramping was an issue that Western Health was working to address and the new task force report was also looking to address.
According to the report, hospitals will take responsibility for emergency patients as soon as ambulances arrive.
“Western Health is always committed to managing patients arriving by ambulance as quickly as possible. This is difficult given the increasing numbers of presentations to our emergency departments,” Mr Harrison said.
He said Western Health was working to increase the space available for emergency department patients and were considering several options.
Labor’s Parliamentary Secretary for Health, Wade Noonan, said the figures proved that “ramping at hospitals has never been as bad as it is now”.
“Longer ramping times at hospitals means patients are waiting longer to get into hospital and there are fewer ambulances available to respond to life-threatening emergencies – this places lives at risk,” Mr Noonan said.
“It’s impossible to run an efficient ambulance service if they’re constantly being misused as pop-up emergency departments for gridlocked hospitals.”
“We need our ambulances available to attend emergencies, not sitting in queues created by a lack of hospital beds.”
Mr Noonan slammed the new task force report which would allow ambulances to “dump and run” patients.
“Without the additional promised beds and staff, this dump-and-run policy will simply deepen the pressure on our failing health system.”
