Rural hospital sits idle as ramping crisis grows
Calls to fund reopening 20 empty beds in a heritage-listed hospital on the Fleurieu Peninsula are growing, in a bid to tackle the state’s ramping crisis.
Renewed calls to reopen the heritage-listed McLaren Vale Districts and War Memorial Hospital are being made as its 20-bed ward sits idle amid the state’s ramping crisis.
CEO of management group Equila Jesse Trout – hired by the McLaren Vale Hospital board to transform the site into a new health precinct – is leading a push to get the service reopened saying the southern region’s ageing population is often forced to travel long distances for transitional care.
“Despite SA recording historic ramping levels in 2025, theMcLaren Vale Hospital has a maintained, fire-compliant inpatient ward sitting idle due to lack of funding. The space could support around 20 step-down, subacute or palliative beds, providing much-needed capacity for an ageing southern community,” he said.
“Ramping is a symptom of a system jam. If you want ambulances off the ramp, you need places for people to go once they don’t need an emergency department bed.
“We’re not asking the state to build a new hospital. We’re asking them to fund the commissioning of beds we can mobilise in the southern catchment.”
The non-for-profit hospital operated for more than 70 years in the state’s south, before it was closed two years ago with its board citing difficulties to remain viable and the challenges of ageing infrastructure and rising costs.
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Its website reads that the closure is a “temporary situation so those behind the scenes can rebuild it into a health location for the 21st Century and beyond” and the volunteer-run board is “meeting with stakeholders to build our hospital’s future”.
Trout told InDaily that reactivating the inpatient ward would support the state’s southern population as it continued to age.
He said that McLaren Vale and the wider Onkaparinga region have some of the oldest demographics in the state, and older patients were travelling long distances for transitional care while ambulances remain stuck outside emergency departments.
“It’s quite often an older person who really does need to get immediate treatment somewhere close,” he said.
“If there’s an emergency now they have to go to Noarlunga or Victor Harbor, and they’ll often get moved on to Flinders”.
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Trout said the “team” at McLaren Vale Hospital wanted the government to fund a 90 to 180-day pilot to activate the ward with staffing and to establish a referral pathway from the Flinders, Noarlunga and Repat hospitals.
Since the 2022 State Election, patients have spent over 164,000 hours waiting in ambulance ramps. This is the equivalent of more than 18 years lost to delays, according to December figures from the Australian Medical Association.
And despite Labor promising to ‘fix the crisis’ at the last state election, it has only worsened with the association saying patients were falling through the gaps as ramping reached record highs.
A Health Minister spokesperson referred questions to SA Health, with the department saying high-quality healthcare was a priority across all our Local Health Networks and the department was “always looking at ways to improve our services and deliver more beds”.
Recent investments on the Fleurieu Peninsula and southern Adelaide included opening 60 new beds at Noarlunga Hospital and the Southern Fleurieu Health Service undergoing a $16.8 million upgrade, increasing dmergency department patient spaces from five to 20.
The spokesperson said palliative care nurses were employed at the Southern Fleurieu Health Service, providing support to Fleurieu patients and their families during end-of-life care.
“SA Health receives many proposals from private businesses that provide their ideas on alleviating pressure within the public health system,” the statement said.
“We thank Equila for its suggestions and are reaching out to Equila CEO Jesse Trout to discuss them further. Any engagement of services would be required to go through government procurement and tender processes.”
Liberal Health and Wellbeing spokesperson Heidi Girolamo said if the Liberals won the upcoming state election it would look “at the system as a system-wide approach and this includes how to best support the McLaren Vale Hospital”.
“We’ve got a clear plan to maintain the current Women’s and Children’s Hospital as a health precinct to support the whole system,” she said.
“We’re committed to building a better health system, not just a bigger one and all options should be considered.”
