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Ambulance ramping has fallen to the lowest level in half a decade, the state government has claimed, but the opposition says Queenslanders are still struggling to even get a hospital appointment.
Premier David Crisafulli on Sunday announced ramping reached a five-year low in the last quarter of 2025, at 37.3 per cent.
“Over the last decade, ambulance ramping has tripled in Queensland,” Crisafulli said at QEII hospital on Brisbane’s south side.
“This [the latest figure] is the best result that has been recorded in half a decade, and it shows that the changes that have been made are starting to bear fruit, but we’ve got a long way to go.”
The government claimed elective surgery waitlists remained stable at almost 62,000, which was down from 66,632 just after the election.
But deputy Labor opposition leader Cameron Dick said 300,000 Queenslanders were still waiting to get an appointment at a public hospital.
He said that number was the equivalent to the population of Townsville and Cairns combined.
He said the average monthly specialist waiting list was growing twice as fast under the LNP as it was in the last year of the Labor government.
“The LNP want to give themselves a medal today about their performance when it comes to ramping in public hospitals, but this is the oldest trick in the book,” Dick said.
“If you can’t get an appointment with a doctor, you never get your treatment journey started, and you’ll never need a hospital bed.
“Now that may open up more beds for patients coming into hospitals through emergency departments, but it leaves hundreds of thousands of Queenslanders languishing on the waitlist for the waitlist.”
Health Minister Tim Nicholls said the figures would move around, and that more work needed to be done, but the trend was in the right direction.
According to the Queensland Health data from December, patients waited 29 days for an initial specialist appointment.
The data also shows that it took 14 minutes to be seen in an emergency department. There were more than 207,000 arrivals at emergency departments across the state. The number of arrivals by ambulance was 64,625.
The figures come as the premier on Sunday marked a milestone for the QEII hospital expansion, with the top floor completed and the fitout expected to begin shortly.
The expanded hospital will bring 112 new inpatient beds, upgraded surgical facilities, and a new car park.
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Cloe Read is the crime and court reporter at Brisbane Times.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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