Ramping will never be eliminated, and more lives will be saved if clinicians, governments and the media shift focus to making it safer, a coroner has concluded.

Deputy State Coroner Ian White did not hold back when discussing SA’s obsession with ramping figures in his findings into the high-profile deaths of three elderly patients who spent hours in ambulances before being admitted to ED.

He found one of the patients could have been saved if blood tests were completed while the patient waited for admission — and the earlier insertion of a nasogastric tube would likely have prevented the death of a second patient.

But he criticised the “fixation” by media and clinicians on eliminating ramping, stressing that every strategy to date had been “swallowed” by the ever-increasing demand on the health system, including an increase in beds.