Skip to main content
Home
  • The Legislative Assembly meets on 16/04/2024 (01:00 PM)
    Assembly sit 16/04/2024
  • The Legislative Council meets on 16/04/2024 (01:00 PM)
    Council sit 16/04/2024
  • The Public Administration meets on 08/04/2024 (10:00 AM)
    Committee meet 08/04/2024

Parliamentary Questions


Question Without Notice No. 820 asked in the Legislative Assembly on 1 December 2022 by Ms L. Mettam

Parliament: 41 Session: 1

AMBULANCE RAMPING

820. Ms L. METTAM to the Minister for Health:

I refer to the November monthly record of 5 767 hours of ambulance ramping, which has added to the highest ever annual ramping figure of more than 60 000 hours this year so far. Given that ramping figures are now the highest ever recorded under the minister's watch, has she simply given up on the Labor Party's 2017 election promise to reduce ambulance ramping?

Ms A. SANDERSON replied:

The numbers for ramping this month are tracking downwards from the peak that we reached in winter, which everyone expected because we were in the middle of a pandemic dealing with a COVID peak and a large number of respiratory illnesses. We had to cope with furlough, respiratory illnesses and so on and so forth. In the last 12 months, the state government has put 483 beds into the system that will help to ease some of those flow pressures that we see around ramping. One of the key things—I have said this many, many times—is that this is an issue around all the pinch points across the whole spectrum of system, which includes access to primary care and a GP when needed, as well as access to the emergency department, processes within hospitals, discharge processes and the ability to discharge people into appropriate settings when they are medically fit for discharge. As we know, significant numbers of people can be ready and medically fit but cannot be discharged because of the paucity of appropriate aged-care facilities. That was driven down and into the ground by the former federal government.

One of the key interactions with the system is our ambulance service and how it functions. I want to bring to the attention of the house, including the opposition, a letter I received today from St John Ambulance about its performance over the last few months and some of the key performance indicators that it has been meeting. It had a tough time at the beginning of this year and that saw a significant intervention by the state government in which senior emergency response personnel from the Department of Health and Western Australia Police Force were put into St John to work with it to ensure that it was meeting the standards within the current framework and resources. I will quote from the letter —

The initiative built new cooperation, engagement and understanding between St John, the Department of Health, WA Police Force and the Department of Fire and Emergency Services.

At the time of the intervention, the St John Priority 1 response Key Performance Indicator for 90 per cent of cases responded to within 15 minutes was 74.9 per cent.

Since working more closely with our interagency colleagues, St John delivered five months of consecutive improvement in Priority 1 response to 84 per cent of responses within 15 minutes during November, and Triple Zero � calls answered with the 10 second benchmark has remained above 90 per cent since June.

Congratulations to St John for its work. Congratulations to the interagency team that went in there. I note that in the contribution from the member for Vasse last week, she criticised this response and called it a failure. She called it a failed intervention response. The numbers do not lie and they come from St John.