West Australian Health Minister Kim Hames wants to stop ambulance ramping at Perth hospitals but the move has been criticised as a band-aid solution to wider problems in the health system.
Ramping occurs when paramedics are forced to wait at hospitals with patients deemed non-urgent until emergency department staff are able to accept the patients.
Dr Hames said ambulance ramping figures had improved since 2012, although not as fast as he would like, especially at the new Fiona Stanley Hospital.
He said it may be time for hospitals to accept responsibility for patients earlier, something they had resisted in the past.
“They say it creates an emergency department outside the emergency department but someone has to look after those patients and since the hospital is responsible for those patients they may as well look after them while they are waiting for a bed,” he said.
Dr Hames said he would look at extra resources for hospital staff to takeover responsibility earlier, so paramedics could get back on the road.
“I’ve asked Bryant Stokes the acting director general [of health] to go and talk to all emergency departments with a view to setting up a system where the hospitals have to take the responsibility for them in say 20 minutes … or whatever works out to be the most appropriate time,” he said.
Entire health system requires more funding
Emergency department doctor and former WA Australian Medical Association president Dave Mountain told 720 ABC Perth the solution to ramping needed a whole of hospital approach, not just a waiting room at the front doors.
“Ramping is caused by a whole bunch of problems with capacity in the emergency department, capacity in the hospitals and increased patient numbers coming into the hospitals,” he said.
“There are times of the day where everything just won’t fit in and it will be unsafe for patients if they are just corralled at the front with very few staff around and in a very poorly resourced environment and that’s one of the reasons they stay with the ambulance crews because you can maintain at least good supervision throughout that time.”
Dr Mountain said the Minister needed to look at better resourcing of the whole health system.
“If we actually had the right amounts of staff and resources already then probably these things would be going away, but the fact is we’re always constrained.
“They have cut staff, cut beds, cut resources in our hospitals over the last one to two years and that’s starting to fray at the edges.
“You need a whole of hospital, whole of system solution, not just a band-aid to make the ramping numbers look better for the Minister.”