All five Darwin ambulances are at times unable to respond to emergencies due to delays paramedics face offloading patients at the beleaguered Royal Darwin Hospital (RDH), the Northern Territory's ambulance service provider has revealed.
The admission from St John Ambulance NT comes after health insiders revealed to the ABC the Northern Territory's largest hospital is operating in emergency management conditions on a daily basis, and is struggling to cope with extreme demand pressures at its emergency department.
St John NT director of ambulance services Andrew Thomas said those pressures were also impacting response times for the service.
"When we arrive at hospital, quite often, we're able to take the patient actually into the hospital, but the issue is, there's not an emergency bed for them … so our crews are left there with the patient on the stretcher," Mr Thomas said.
"At times, we can have all [five] of our ambulances tied up [at RDH] and then there's no free ambulance to actually respond."
The ABC has obtained data from St John that shows the average turnaround...
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