Ambulance ramping data casts doubt over LNP promise to reduce wait times

Queues of long-wait ambulance patients outside many of Queensland's major hospital emergency departments have barely budged in the last two years.

The latest Queensland Health performance data for August shows statewide ambulance ramping is sitting at 42 per cent across Queensland's 26 top public hospital emergency departments (ED).

That means 42 per cent of patients who arrive at those hospitals by ambulance are waiting longer than 30 minutes to be transferred off a stretcher into an ED.

In July, ambulance ramping across the same hospitals stood at 38.7 per cent — 3.3 percentage points better than the August figures.

The numbers are only marginally better than the August before the Crisafulli Government came to power in 2024, when ramping stood at 43.9 per cent.

In 2025 — Queensland's worst flu season on record — August ramping rates were at 45.6 per cent under the LNP Government.

Pressure to reduce ramping

The latest August data comes just ahead of the halfway mark in the Crisafulli Government's first four-year term and on the back of a late flu season.

It puts in serious doubt the Premier's commitment ahead of the 2024 election to get ambulance ramping down to under 30 per cent before the 2028 poll.

The latest figures pile more pressure on Health Minister Tim Nicholls after Premier David Crisafulli tied his cabinet future to cutting ambulance ramping to below 30 per cent before the next election.

Opposition leader Steven Miles predicted ramping figures would continue to worsen.

"You can't fix ramping while not delivering growth funding to our hospitals, not having a workforce plan, and not building the new beds that are needed," he said.

"The government still hasn't delivered a workforce plan to deliver the staffing those hospitals need and of course, they've delayed the build of new beds that would provide some relief to the bed block that is choking our emergency departments."

August ramping figures show hospitals in the Metro South Health region are particularly struggling.

Logan Hospital, south of Brisbane, recorded ramping levels at 61.8 per cent and at the Princess Alexandra Hospital, more than half of the patients arriving at the emergency department by ambulance were ramped for more than half an hour.

In the regions, Cairns Hospital ramping was 45.6 per cent in August, Bundaberg Hospital was only marginally better at 44.7 per cent, and at Rockhampton Hospital, it was 39.1 per cent.

Gold Coast University Hospital just snuck in under the 30 per cent target, recording 28.9 per cent — a huge improvement on when the Miles Government was in power when ramping was at 48.2 per cent in August 2024 — two months before the Queensland election.

Ambulance ramping at Ipswich Hospital, west of Brisbane, has also turned around in the past two years.

In August 2024, a whopping 63.5 per cent of patients arriving by ambulance to the hospital, were ramped for more than the recommended benchmark of 30 minutes.

That has been cut to 34.5 per cent on the back of the Mater Springfield Hospital opening in May.

A spokeswoman for acting Health and Ambulance Services Minister Dale Last said the 2026 August ramping data was the lowest August figures in five years.

In August 2021, ambulance ramping was 38.7 per cent at Queensland’s major public hospitals.

This year’s data comes amid a record high 211,664 presentations to Queensland public hospital emergency departments in August.