Ambulance Ramping

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Leader of the Opposition) (14:31): My question is again to the Premier. What does the Premier say to the family of 54-year-old Eddie from Hectorville?

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier) (14:32): A number of things. The first thing is that the government's expectation and commitment is to dramatically improve the situation that Eddie had to confront late last year, when his carer tragically had to call 000 on behalf of Eddie and get access to an ambulance service. Eddie's case is of course being thoroughly reviewed by SAAS, as is appropriate, and we await the outcome of that exercise. What we saw there was 000 being called. Eddie's case was triaged as a low-priority case.

Subsequently, Eddie went into the queue waiting for an ambulance, not being of an acute high order. Time elapsed beyond what would be reasonably expected for even a low-acuity case for the ambulance to roll up. When it was elevated to a priority 1 in the early hours of the following morning, of course the ambulance did come within four minutes, but in this particular case, it was too late for Eddie. There are legitimate questions around what led to that occurring, including why the late elevation to a high-acuity case.

For Eddie and his family, what matters is that when they call 000, they can rely on the ambulance rolling up at a clinically appropriate time. This is the point: the ambulance response times issue isn't a political point. It is actually manifestly important to people who rely on these services. What I would say to anybody who is concerned with that metric is that, absolutely, we need to improve on the situation that we have today, but the situation we have today is a lot, lot, lot better than what was the case two years ago.

In fact, just to be clear about this, we know that ambulance response times in the month that we have just had, corresponding to two years ago, ambulance response times were 36—

Mrs Hurn interjecting:

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: Well, we can pick any month you like. In December 2021, P2 on-time performance was 51 per cent. In January 2022, the corresponding month we have just had, it was 36 per cent. It has now gone from 36 per cent—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: —to 65 per cent. Now, any family who is concerned about ambulance response times would take comfort knowing that the likelihood of the ambulance rolling up on time is twice as high today as what was the case two years ago.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: Almost twice: 36 per cent to 65 per cent. The number of ambulances rolling up late as a percentage was twice as high than what is the case. That, of course, doesn't change the circumstances that tragically applied in Eddie's circumstance, which is heartbreaking, but it is improving and it has improved a lot.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: An interjection referring to COVID reasonably points out COVID, and of course what we saw with COVID was a dramatic reduction in a whole lot of activity that was occurring in our hospitals because COVID didn't come into South Australia until the early months of 2022. So, in late 2021, COVID was of a very low order presence in our society, and even then ambulance response times weren't collapsing. We know that there is work to be done—that remains ongoing—but the state is in a far better position today than what was the case two years ago.