A family has come forward today, claiming an elderly cancer patient was forced to wait in "excruciating pain" for an ambulance before her death last year. Betty Dobson's husband is calling for change, after he says he was forced to drive his wife to hospital because no ambulances were available. But the state's ambulance service has defended its response time...and points to improvements in high-priority responses.
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00:00 A family's agony over the latest tragedy to come to light in the state's ramping crisis.
00:07 I'm angry because my dad had to watch the woman he loved more than anything on this
00:17 earth suffering and not knowing, not knowing when the ambulance is coming.
00:22 72-year-old Betty Dobson was battling pancreatic cancer when she died last year from a perforated
00:28 bowel.
00:29 In February, Betty's husband Stephen called Triple Zero when his wife was suffering extreme
00:34 abdominal pain.
00:35 He says after waiting for an hour, he called back only to be told there wasn't an ambulance
00:41 available, then choosing to drive his wife to the nearby Nolunga Hospital.
00:45 It took us a lot of, my neighbour and I, a lot of trouble and a lot of pain to get her
00:50 into a small car.
00:51 Whether the ambulance was there earlier or not, it wouldn't have prolonged her life,
00:55 but it certainly would have alleviated the pain.
00:58 Stephen approached the state opposition with his experience after Liberal leader David
01:01 Spears put a call out to anyone affected by the state's ramping crisis.
01:06 But ambulance service logs obtained by the ABC show only 22 minutes between Stephen's
01:11 calls, as opposed to the rough hour that he and the opposition claimed.
01:16 Betty was listed as a priority three patient by the ambulance service, a level which is
01:21 aimed to be attended to in under 30 minutes.
01:24 An opposition spokesperson told the ABC the family could have hardly had the stopwatch
01:28 out during the incident, and questioned why the family were told no ambulances were available
01:33 at the time.
01:35 The opposition did not respond to why they did not verify the Dobson family's claim.
01:40 The government says ambulance wait times for high priority call outs are improving, with
01:44 more than 75 per cent of priority one calls attended on time in December last year.
01:50 But the opposition says despite these statistics, the ramping crisis remains.
01:55 It doesn't matter which month, over the nearly two years in office that we look at, they
01:59 have delivered the worst 18 months of ramping in our state's history.
02:03 [BLANK_AUDIO]