A foster carer has died in a Queensland hospital after being left waiting three hours in one of 13 ambulances lined up at the emergency department.
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00:00 A family dealing with a devastating loss.
00:05 Our family, my dad, we all had such faith in this health system.
00:12 Wayne Irving died in Ipswich Hospital last week after waiting three hours on an ambulance stretcher.
00:20 The 67-year-old had been experiencing abdominal pain but never made it to a hospital bed.
00:26 We have a system that is broken. It's failing us, it's failing everyone around us and something needs to change.
00:35 Outside the hospital, his family demanded action.
00:39 We don't want this to happen to anyone else.
00:42 Bringing the opposition leader to tears.
00:45 It makes it pretty real. When these issues get raised, there's always an excuse.
00:52 Of course it's not acceptable. We're doing everything we can to tackle ambulance ramping.
00:57 New state government data has revealed some patients waited almost 10 hours to be transferred from an ambulance stretcher to a hospital bed this year.
01:07 The longest wait was 9 hours and 54 minutes at Ipswich Hospital in June.
01:13 Another patient in July, again at Ipswich, waited 9 hours and 52 minutes.
01:19 The Redland Hospital and Princess Alexandra Hospital also recorded long waits.
01:25 People aren't going to the GP, they're coming to hospital.
01:28 Record numbers, 2.28 million in the last year. That's the highest on record.
01:34 And they're sicker. More category 1 and category 2 cases.
01:37 The Health Minister has called an urgent meeting with emergency department bosses tomorrow
01:43 to discuss solutions to ambulance ramping and the lengthy wait times.
01:48 The Palaszczuk government has faced fresh criticism over the issue in recent weeks,
01:53 with Shannon Fentiman conceding the state has to do better.
01:57 We've seen a 4% improvement on patient off-stretcher time in the last few months.
02:02 There's so much more to do.
02:04 [BLANK_AUDIO]