Hospitals' State Of Emergency
Illawarra Mercury
Wednesday November 28, 2007
EMERGENCY departments are failing to adequately treat patients because hospitals are forced to run at high levels of capacity, a meeting of the country's top emergency physicians was told yesterday.
A snapshot of 70 Australian hospital emergency departments, taken at 10am on June 18, showed that access block was a big problem across the country.Access block occurs when an emergency patient cannot be admitted to a ward bed because there are none available.The backlog means other emergency patients are forced to wait longer for treatment, and often ambulances are unable to off load patients."Hospitals are being run at about 100 per cent (capacity), every bed is taken," said Professor Drew Richardson, who presented the findings at the annual general meeting of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine."We need to run efficiently with only 85 per cent of beds occupied so there are beds for people who need them."Access block has caused chaos at Wollongong Hospital in the past, forcing patients to be transferred to Sydney hospitals, the cancellation of elective surgery procedures and ambulances to wait in the hospital car park until beds could be found for patients.The Australian Medical Association's Public Hospital Report Card 2007 said last month that NSW teaching hospitals, including Wollongong Hospital, were operating at dangerously high capacity levels.The emergency physicians also heard that patient safety was at risk because of a lack of supervision of young and inexperienced doctors in emergency departments.The comments follow the college's decision in May to strip Shellharbour Hospital of its authority to train emergency doctors after trainees were found to have dangerously high workloads, with limited supervision or back-up from senior doctors.The hospital is in the process of regaining that accreditation.
© 2007 Illawarra Mercury
