Patients experiencing chest pain who do not make it from the ambulance to an ED bed inside of 17 minutes are more likely to die than those delivered in a timely manner, a study shows.

Analysis of data on 213,000 transported adults confirms that so-called ambulance ramping affects clinical outcomes and should be urgently addressed, say Melbourne cardiologists and co-authors from Ambulance Victoria.

The researchers found that delays in patient offload beyond 17 minutes increased the risk of death or another ED presentation within 30 days for patients with non-traumatic chest pain.

“Improving the speed of ambulance to ED transfers is urgently required,” the researchers wrote in The Medical Journal of Australia.