Ambulance ramping has soared to record highs, with paramedics wasting thousands of hours outside Queensland hospitals.
Documents tabled in state parliament reveal the ambulances lost 16,036 hours in May, setting a monthly record high in ramping time.
On the Sunshine Coast, 764 hours were lost that month.
In total, more than 3890 total hours were lost in the Sunshine Coast Hospital and Health Service between January and June 2023, or 22 hours per day.
An Opposition press release said this was the equivalent of more than two crews being taken off the road.
Across the state paramedics lost 85,456 hours over the six months.
Health Minister Shannon Fentiman conceded the early flu season that swept the state affected waiting times and alleviating the pressure on emergency waiting times remained a priority.
“There have been a number of pressures in the last financial year – we saw a record number of patients at our emergency department, over 2.2 million Queenslanders presented at our emergency departments,” the minister told ABC Radio on Monday.
The minister said the government allocated $764 million to tackle ambulance ramping in the state budget.
“We are throwing everything at this,” Ms Fentiman said.
“We have had obviously a global pandemic, and every hospital system in the world is under pressure, but I believe with the investment that we have into staff and beds and our satellite hospitals, we will start to see improvement.”
Opposition Leader David Crisafulli said the Palaszczuk government failed to grasp the seriousness of the health crisis.
“For the state government to refuse to admit Queensland Health is in crisis shows they will never be able to heal a sick system,” he said.
Metro South Hospital and Health Service recorded the worst results, with 29,568 lost hours during the first half of the year.
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