Demand action on hospital ramping

A report card from the Australian Medical Association (AMA) paints a stark picture of the escalating ambulance ramping crisis across Australia, revealing that in many states, ramping has doubled in the past five years. 

The AMA’s Ambulance Ramping Report Card 2025 highlights the devastating impact of logjammed hospitals, leaving patients waiting too long to be admitted, sometimes with tragic consequences. 

AMA president, Dr Danielle McMullen, described the levels of ramping as “alarming, with reports of people tragically dying while waiting for an ambulance or dying in ambulances waiting for admission to hospital”.  

She emphasised that dedicated hospital and ambulance staff are struggling to provide necessary care due to under-resourcing and a critical shortage of beds caused by “exit block”. 

Exit block occurs when patients ready for discharge, particularly those awaiting aged care or disability support, cannot be moved, thus occupying beds needed for new admissions. This bottleneck effect exacerbates waiting times not only for ambulance services but also for emergency departments and essential elective surgeries. 

The issue of bed shortages caused by exit block or stranded patients is an issue that National Seniors Australia believes needs immediate attention, so we have commenced a Better Health in the Home campaign.  

You can read about this at the end of this article.

The AMA’s Ambulance Ramping Report Card, reveals a consistent and concerning trend. Across the nation, ambulances are spending considerably more hours ramped outside hospitals compared to just five years prior. 

For instance, in Queensland, while total ramped hours saw a slight decrease in the past year, they have surged by a staggering 149% since 2019–20, reaching approximately 157,000 hours in 2023–24. Similarly, South Australia has witnessed a tripling of ramped hours during the same period, climbing to 45,399 hours in 2023–24. 

Dr McMullen said that “in some states, the total hours ramped has more than doubled in the past five years. The human and financial costs of this blowout cannot be ignored.” 

The report underscores that this situation mirrors the broader struggles of public hospitals, which have been grappling with rising demand for many years, a situation worsened significantly since the onset of COVID-19. 

While the report notes a minor, yet much-needed, improvement in performance in most states and territories during 2023–24, the overall trend remains deeply concerning. 

In New South Wales, despite a slight improvement in the percentage of patients transferred within the 30-minute target (reaching over 78% in 2023-24), the state still falls short of its 90% target, a benchmark it met in 2018–19. 

Victoria also saw a 6.6 percentage point improvement in patients transferred within its 40-minute target in 2023-24, but performance still lags significantly behind 2019-20 levels.