Fewer SA ambulances getting to emergencies on time
New data released by the South Australian state government shows a fall in the number of emergency ambulance calls reached on time in January compared to December. But the Premier insists paramedics are getting to more patients on time compared to two years ago.
Transcript
00:00 With paper patients on display, the Premier pressed the flesh with paramedics.
00:07 "I don't know why they chose you!"
00:10 And spruiked the progress he says has been made reducing ambulance delays,
00:14 despite the number of hours lost to ramping at hospitals remaining near record highs.
00:20 "While there is a lot of work that needs to be done, a lot has been achieved
00:24 and South Australians deserve to know about it."
00:27 Peter Malinowskis and Health Minister Chris Picton once again pointing to ambulance response times.
00:33 Highest priority emergency calls should be seen within 8 minutes, 60% of the time.
00:40 CREWS exceeded that in January with 71% of jobs reached within that target.
00:45 It's a worse outcome than December, but the government says it's a major improvement on two years ago
00:52 when 47% of priority 1 calls were reached on time during the Omicron COVID wave in January 2022.
01:00 "We can see through the course of two years a very clear improvement
01:05 in terms of how many people are getting those ambulances on time."
01:08 While 65% of priority 2 cases were reached within target time in January,
01:14 an improvement on December, it remains short of the 90% goal set for urgent calls.
01:20 "Even with improvement, they're still much worse than they were
01:24 for the vast majority of the Marshall Liberal government's time in office."
01:27 While selling one set of stats, there's silence on the other.
01:31 The Ambulance Service is yet to respond to an ABC request for information
01:35 on the number of people who've died waiting for crews since the last state election.
01:41 "We believe we do have information that will answer some of the questions of the applicant.
01:46 We are keen to not deny the application that bases.
01:49 We're actually keen to try and work with the applicant to provide relevant information."
01:53 And it's not yet clear when it will be made public.
01:56 [BLANK_AUDIO]