Ambulance waiting times worsening

Chris Conway thought he was having a heart attack at 1.15am the night of July 22.

The Surry Hills resident urgently rang for an ambulance, which arrived 15 minutes later.

“If I had I actually been having a heart attack, it could have been a very different story,” Mr Conway said of the wait for an ambulance.

“Once the ambulance drivers determined that I wasn’t having a heart attack, when I got to St Vincent’s Hospital they actually wanted to take me off the trolley and onto a seat.”

Mr Conway, 50, refused to do so and this ensured the emergency services workers waited with him.

“The ambulance [drivers] were really angry about that,” said Mr Conway. “The set up they have at the moment is until you are seen by a doctor and actually treated, the ambos have to wait.

“But the ambulance drivers can’t move you or can’t leave until you have been taken over by a doctor.

“They were really cheesed off. They wanted me to get me on a seat and sit down because they wanted to go. It was well over an hour before I was actually seen by a doctor and they had to hang around.”

Ambulance waiting times are deteriorating. The NSW Auditor-General’s Performance Audit handed down on July 24 revealed the total time spent by ambulances at hospitals rose from 30.5 minutes seven years ago to 42.1 minutes in 2011/12.

The report also found that the proportion of ambulance patients offloaded in 30 minutes fell from 77 to 65 per cent over the seven-year period, while the number of hospitals not offloading 90 per cent of patients in 30 minutes rose from 34 to 64 per cent. The median response time for the highest priority emergency calls rose from 9.5 to 10.9 minutes.

NSW Greens MLC John Kaye said the waiting times are worsening due to lack of funding and staff shortages.

“In the end, this is about needing more staff in the office,” he said. “The O’Farrell Government is in denial because fixing this problem is going to cost money and they are not prepared to spend that money.”

“The O’Farrell Government thinks that they can cut costs on so-called back office jobs and they think they can shift money around and that will solve the problem. In the end, we just need more human power in hospitals to be able to deal with the load and prevent people waiting around on trolleys.”

Acting NSW Health Minister Kevin Humphries countered that the budget had, in fact, improved funding for the emergency department.

“The record 2013/14 NSW Budget provides funding for an extra 69,000 emergency department attendances this year and an extra 3,000 elective surgeries,” said Mr Humphries.

A spokesperson for the NSW Ministry of Health pointed to population growth as an answer to the ‘trolley block’ in the state’s emergency department.

“The Auditor-General notes ambulance arrivals have increased at over four times the population growth in recent years,” said the spokesperson.

“This has been coupled with an unprecedented increase in emergency department activity. This growth has had an impact on the time it takes to get patients off-stretcher and also turnaround times. Longer ambulance delays impact on emergency response capabilities, especially during peaks in demand.”

The Auditor-General’s report found that 83 per cent of all patients were transferred into hospital’s care within 30 minutes and 33 per cent of patients within 10 minutes.