Ambulances were ramped for 3,290 hours during September, a reduction of 11.6 per cent compared to August’s total of 3,721 hours.
Response times are significantly improved, with 67.6 per cent of Priority 1 (emergency) callouts in metropolitan Adelaide attended to within the target eight minutes – up from 52.4 per cent this time last year.
In addition, 59.1 per cent of Priority 2 (urgent) callouts in metropolitan Adelaide arrived within their target of 16 minutes up from just 45.4 per cent this time last year.
Priority 2 Response Times
It was also the fifth straight month where ramping has decreased year-on-year – with a 7.8 per cent decrease from last September’s total of 3,567 hours.
Detailed ramping and response time data, including a hospital-by-hospital breakdown, is available publicly on the SA Health website.
Ramping hours
As put by Susan Close
While there is still much to achieve, it’s incredibly pleasing this month to see more ambos reaching urgent cases on time and less hours spent on the ramp.
We’ve significantly invested in our hospital and ambulance services – and already we’ve seen 149 additional ambos hit our roads since we formed Government.
In just our first 12 months of government we recruited an additional 550 full time clinical staff, including 278 extra nurses and 89 extra doctors.
In the dying days of the Liberal Government in January 2022, just 36.2 per cent of “lights and sirens” Priority 2 cases were seeing an ambulance on time – now we’re seeing 59.1 per cent of those ambulances arrive on time.
We know there is still plenty of work to do and we are getting on with the job of fixing our health system.
