Ambulance Ramping Hours Reach Record New High In February
Media Release | 2 March 2026
Basil Zempilas MLA
Leader of the Opposition
Libby Mettam MLAShadow Minister for Health
WA’s hospital emergency departments have recorded the worst February on record for ambulance ramping hours, despite repeated warnings about the urgent need to prevent a repeat of last year’s record ambulance ramping.
Patients waited in the back of ambulances, or on stretchers in hospital corridors, for a record 4,892 hours last month - 52 hours more than February 2025, the previous worst February on record. In February 2017 ramping was just 691 hours.
Opposition Leader Basil Zempilas said after a decade in Government, Roger Cook and successive health ministers had comprehensively failed Western Australia’s hospital system.
“Let’s remember that Premier Roger Cook, when he was shadow health minister, described 1000 hours of ambulance ramping as a horror story. Already we are seeing four times that figure for the month of February,” he said.
“Labor has not built one new hospital in ten years and the result we are now seeing is record ambulance ramping in February and the worst emergency wait times in the country.“Premier Cook and his ministers like to keep reminding everyone we are the wealthiest state in the country and yet time and time again they are failing to prioritise the health of the state.”
Shadow Health Minister Libby Mettam said on average, ambulances were ramped for more than 174 hours each day in February.“That time adds up to the equivalent of seven full days, every single day where paramedics are held up in emergency departments, unable to hand patients over because EDs are overcrowded and overwhelmed,” she said.
"And while they’re waiting, those ambulances and crews are off the road, meaning they’re not available to respond to new Triple Zero calls when the next emergency happens.“It is clear already this Government doesn’t have the answers and hasn’t done the work to ensure WA patients don’t experience a repeat of last year’s horror winter season."
“WA Labor has failed to listen to health workers, patients and advocates who continue to raise the alarm about the need to make the hospital system, healthcare workers and patients a priority.”
In October last year, the Australian Medical Association, Australian Nursing Federation, Health Services Union of WA and United Workers Union come together with a 5-point plan to Government to tackle ambulance ramping.
That included 400 more aged care beds, new emergency department diversions for better pathways to care, staffing every bed, 7-day hospitals and one rulebook for a unified approach to healthcare.“
This was an unprecedented approach to Government by health leaders in this state and it is disappointing Health Minister Meredith Hammat clearly did not listen,” Ms Mettam said.
“The Opposition welcomes the additional resources that will be provided through the winter flu strategy, but we cannot afford to wait until winter. We already have a hospital system that is stretched and it’s only March.“Just last month we saw reports of a 74-year-old grandmother, with a brain tumour diagnosis, being shunted to a ‘dungeon’ ward in the back of the emergency department at Royal Perth Hospital.“In the same month we saw a woman give birth on the side of a freeway after being refused admittance to a hospital due to a lack of beds and then denied an ambulance for a transfer to another hospital an hour away."
“West Australians deserve better.”
