Increased Ramping Turns Hospitals into “Park-ing Lots”, Opposition Says

The NSW Opposition has accused the Minns Labor Government of allowing hospitals across Sydney to become “parking lots” for ambulances, arguing that patients and frontline health workers continue to face pressure across the public hospital system.

The criticism follows the release of the latest Bureau of Health Information Healthcare Quarterly report for April to June 2026.

The report presents a mixed picture of hospital performance. Across NSW, 68.7 per cent of emergency department patients started treatment on time, up 2.6 percentage points compared with the same quarter a year earlier.

However, patients spent longer in emergency departments overall, with the median time from arrival to leaving increasing by five minutes to three hours and 49 minutes.

BHI recorded 395,042 ambulance responses during the quarter, the highest number since reporting began in 2010.

Of patients arriving at emergency departments by ambulance, 80.3 per cent were transferred from paramedics to ED staff within 30 minutes, compared with 79.3 per cent in the same quarter of 2025.

The 90th percentile transfer time was 62 minutes. BHI cautioned that comparisons with previous quarters should be interpreted carefully because of temporary data interruptions associated with NSW Health’s transition to the Single Digital Patient Record.

The latest data also recorded 66,378 incomplete emergency department visits during the April to June quarter.

Of those:

• 24,980 patients, or 37.6 per cent, did not wait for treatment to formally begin; and
• 41,398 patients, or 62.4 per cent, left after treatment had started, against clinical advice or before all processes such as prescriptions or test results had been completed.

NSW Opposition Leader Kellie Sloane said the figures showed patients were continuing to experience unacceptable pressure across the health system.

“Last month, the Premier told people to avoid our hospitals, and today’s data reveals many patients were already doing that rather than facing Labor’s long hospital wait times,” Ms Sloane said.

“Labor has shown their only plan for our hospitals is to blame Canberra when something goes wrong.”

Shadow Minister for Health and Regional Health Sarah Mitchell said frontline health workers had been warning about pressure across hospitals for months.

“Under the Minns Labor Government, our hospitals are strained, ambulances are ramped, waiting rooms are full, patients are walking out without finishing treatment, and critical frontline health staff are burning out trying to keep the system afloat,” Mrs Mitchell said.

The Opposition said its analysis of results from the state’s larger public hospitals showed around 6,500 more patients left without completing treatment compared with the corresponding period last year.

Because of incomplete data associated with the rollout of NSW Health’s new digital patient record system, BHI said NSW-level comparisons for incomplete visits could not be made directly with the same quarter a year earlier.

“Instead of delivering on promises to improve our health system, Chris Minns and Ryan Park are focused on pointing the finger at their Labor mates in Canberra,” Mrs Mitchell said.

The Government has presented the same quarterly results differently, highlighting the improvement in patients starting emergency treatment on time and ambulance transfers, while arguing that hospital capacity is increasingly affected by more than 1,300 medically discharged patients waiting for Commonwealth-funded aged care or NDIS support.