Peter Williams: Where's the real ambulance at the top of the ramp?

A shock-horror story about ambulance ramping was the lead story on Newshub last night (1st August). Ramping is when ambulances have to wait on the ramp outside the hospital emergency department because there’s no space inside or no staff available.

In Hamilton at one stage on Tuesday there were twelve ambulances waiting to off load patients. They were parked there for up to four hours. Five had seriously ill patients on board.

The situation seems to be the same everywhere. According to St John, ambulances spent 204 hours ramped up around the country yesterday. The daily average is 130.