One in five patients at Footscray’s Western Hospital waited more than 40 minutes before being transferred from an ambulance in the 2012-13 financial year, according to Western Health’s annual report released last week.
Ambulance Victoria’s annual report, also released last week, blamed ambulance ramping at hospitals for a blow-out in response times.
Western Health’s elective surgery waiting list, which includes Williamstown, Footscray and Sunshine, has blown out to 4891, up 1271 or 35 per cent, in one year.
And 15 patients at Footscray and 36 at Sunshine waited more than 24 hours in an emergency department.
Western Health chief executive Alex Cockram said the surgery list had grown because of population growth, an increase in category-one patients needing surgery within 30 days and the complexity of procedures required.
Williamstown MP Wade Noonan, the opposition parliamentary health secretary, said ambulance response times had risen for the third year in a row.
“Sometimes hospitals have nurses and doctors treating people on ambulance stretchers because there’s essentially no hospital trolley available to transfer them off a stretcher,” he said. “Ambulances have been used as pop-up emergency departments for overcrowded hospitals.
“That’s why the number of ambulances that are able to then respond to code one, life-threatening emergencies has dropped, for the third consecutive year, to 73 per cent of cases, when their target’s 85 per cent.
“That means 27 per cent of cases are not arriving in the government’s own life-saving target of 15 minutes.”
Ambulance union state secretary Steve McGhie said hospital ramping led to deaths.
“My members are telling me it has got worse, not better. The figures show, and the ambulance service says it in the annual report, that ramping is one of the major factors,” he said.
“It’s tragic that it leads to fatal results. While that’s the worse-case scenario, there are many, many people suffering waiting for an ambulance because they’re ramped up at hospitals.
“While hospitals may be seeing more patients, it takes longer for them to be seen.”
State Health Minister David Davis said Victorian hospitals were just starting to recover from Canberra funding cuts.
