Paramedics forced to wait outside with patients as leaked memo exposes hospital strain
A leaked directive from the Queensland government has exposed mounting pressure on the state’s public hospital system, with paramedics forced to wait with patients outside facilities to ease the strain on emergency departments.
The memorandum – sent by Metro South Health, an arm of Queensland Health, to emergency department staff in September last year under the subject line “QAS ramping in acute” – instructs workers to leave stretchers outside hospitals until a room becomes available.
“We’ve become aware that at times of high QAS [Queensland Ambulance Service] demand in the community and triage crowding, there is pressure to ramp QAS trolleys and staff in the acute area,” the memorandum states.
“This is an unacceptable practice and is not to occur.
“QAS trolleys are to be ramped outside the department until room becomes available in the triage area, but they are not to remain in vehicles.”
Ramping refers to delays of more than 30 minutes to transfer patients from the care of paramedics to clinicians in hospital emergency departments.
Metro South continued that if any emergency department staff were pressured by paramedics to ramp in the acute area, they were to “escalate this immediately” with appropriate managers.
United Workers Union Queensland state secretary Fiona Scalon said the leaked directive was the latest sign the Crisafulli government had lost control over emergency department wait times.
“Ambulance resources exist to provide emergency clinical care and respond to community demand,” Scalon wrote in a four-page letter to Queensland Ambulance Service Commissioner Craig Emery expressing her concern.
“They should not be utilised as a mechanism to absorb hospital capacity pressures or compensate for overcrowding within emergency departments.”
She called on the QAS to urgently intervene in the matter and for the directive to be rescinded.
“It’s not good enough that Queensland Health bureaucrats are telling hospital staff to push ambulance officers outside hospitals and impede them from doing the job they are supposed to do,” she said.
“What this shows is an incompetent government completely failing to address the issue of bed block and hospital wait times.
“The Queensland government is trying to push off its failures on to frontline health workers.
“Hospital workers and ambulance officers just want to do their jobs, not be pitted against each other in some kind of Hunger Games fight for beds.”
The Crisafulli government pledged to reduce the statewide average of ramping to below 30 per cent by 2028, and boasted of reaching the lowest quarterly rate since COVID (35.5 per cent) in the June quarter.
But data released in August showed ramping had climbed to 42 per cent.
At a press conference this week, Health Minister Tim Nicholls said the strain on emergency services and hospitals was concerning, and reinforced the government’s commitment to reaching its ramping target.
“We remain focused with a laser-like intensity on those ramping numbers,” Nicholls said.
“We have that 30 per cent target not because that 30 per cent number is a miraculous number … but because of what it means for every person who can’t get into an ED.”
Metro South and Nicholls were contacted for comment.
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