Ambulance 'delays for seriously sick'

It's been revealed that seriously sick patients are queuing for hours to be unloaded from ambulances at busy hospitals across Australia.

Ambulance union officials say "ramping" of patients is so common at major Sydney hospitals that ambulance officers routinely order pizza while they wait, The Australian reported on Monday.

The paper says Ambulance Service statistics reveal that in Queensland, more than 25,000 patients a year have had to wait at least half-an-hour to be unloaded from a waiting ambulance.

And in Melbourne this past winter, nearly 1,000 patients had to wait more than an hour on an ambulance trolley. In 145 cases between May and July, patients waited more than two hours, according to data submitted by the ambulance union to a Victorian parliamentary inquiry.

The National Council of Ambulance Unions secretary, Jim Arnuman, said on Sunday that ramping is a growing problem in Queensland, NSW, Victoria and Western Australia.

Ambulance officers attending Sydney's Westmead Hospital routinely ordered pizza because delays were so long, he said.

"Unfortunately, the hospitals are using the ambulances as a labour pool to look after patients because of their own staff shortages," he said. "On bad nights in various areas of NSW, we have 40 to 70 per cent of our on-shift ambulances tied up in hospitals.

"It is impairing the ability of ambulance services across the country to respond urgently to serious cases."