Bed block at Wollongong Hospital

Illawarra paramedics worked through another horror night on Wednesday, with more than a dozen ambulances queued outside Wollongong Hospital.

Paramedics say it was so busy that they ran out of room for stretchers in the emergency department corridor, and - with more than half the region's ambulances off the road waiting to unload - there was at least one "lights and sirens" Triple-0 call where a patient waited more than five hours for an ambulance.