Ambulance union raises response time concerns after man's death at Sellicks Hill

Australia Broadcast Center

14-07-2025

Concerns about ambulance ramping and resourcing have been raised by the state's ambulance union in the wake of the death of a man involved in a car crash at Sellicks Hill, south of Adelaide, on Saturday morning.
The Ambulance Employees Association (AEA) said it took 17 minutes for an ambulance crew to arrive at the scene of the category one case — which in metropolitan areas would require a response within eight minutes in 60 per cent of cases.
Health Minister Chris Picton said the patient was "outside the Adelaide metropolitan area".
South Australia's Ambulance Service (SAAS) chief executive Rob Elliott said the patient was seen as soon as possible "on our most urgent priority", with multiple resources sent to the scene
He said it was "not very sensible" to aim for an eight minute response time in regional areas where towns could be sparsely located and that SAAS instead endeavoured to "make sure that we have good regional coverage, good access to resources".
He extended his sympathy to the man's family, and praised the "extraordinary" efforts of the bystanders and paramedics who attended the scene.
AEA general secretary Paul Ekkelboom said the case was initially triaged as a category two but within two minutes was upgraded to a category one case where "every minute counts".
He said the "number one thing" affecting ambulance response times was available crews.
"When we don't have crews sitting on station or actively free to respond then it's going to be a delay to get a crew to respond to a patient," he said.
"When they're stuck on a ramp, then obviously we can't free them up to respond to the community.
"The real effect is obviously when we can't get to our patients in time to administer life-saving care."
When asked if the man in this case would have survived if the ambulance response time was faster, Mr Elkkelboom said he was "unsure" but added that he did not have all the patient's medical history.
"What we do know is if we can get there in a timely fashion, oxygenate the brain, and keep that blood pumping and give them the life-saving care that [is] needed, there's a good opportunity that we might be able to get a favourable outcome," he said.
He said bystanders at the scene did their best to help while awaiting the arrival of paramedics.
While he said demand on the health system was high, Mr Ekkelboom acknowledged the government had planned to open more beds later in the year.
"I don't want to see another patient in the community experience what unfortunately happened to that gentleman over the weekend," he said.
Mr Picton said at the time, the ambulance from the closest station "was at another job in the community, assisting someone else".
"Our crews did everything they could to get to that case as soon as possible," he said.
Mr Picton said that because the case occurred outside the metropolitan area, the eight minute response time goal applicable to metropolitan areas did not apply.
When asked, he said ramping did not play a role in this case "based on the regional location".
Last month's ramping numbers were the second highest on record, with ambulances spending 5,387 hours waiting.
Mr Picton said the state's health system — including the ambulance service — was currently dealing with the highest number of influenza cases in the state for the past decade.
He said while 2,000 influenza cases had been recorded in the past week, the numbers were "vastly underestimated" because not everyone with the flu had a PCR test.
There were 164 hospital admissions due to the flu.
"Our health system is under pressure, we know that the flu numbers are up, we know that admissions to hospitals are significantly up, but our doctors, nurses and ambos are working as hard as they can — particularly to see the most urgent cases — to make sure that people can get the care that they need," he said.