Emergency Care Has Decayed

August 8, 2007

Australia's emergency departments have deteriorated drastically in the past three years and will no longer cope in a terrorist attack, according to a new report.

The snapshot of about 70 Australian hospitals by the Australian College for Emergency Medicine has revealed a 33 percent increase in the number of patients waiting longer than eight hours in emergency departments for admission to general wards.

Caring for these so-called "blocked" patients now accounts for 40 percent of emergency staff workloads, meaning they have “considerably depleted ability” to carry out their core duties, the report found.

It is also adding to a surge in overcrowding in major hospitals.

The report compares conditions recorded in wards in June this year with similar data collected back in 2004.

Survey leader Professor Drew Richardson, from the Australian National University and Canberra Hospital, says it showed the wards had deteriorated “drastically” over that time.

"There's simply no longer the space to deal with the kind of influx you would get in a terrorist attack or major disaster," Richardson says. "This is because emergency department beds are now occupied more than ever before by people who need beds in the general wards but can’t get them."

The snapshot showed that at 10 a.m. on June 18, the average Australian emergency department had 24 patients under treatment and another seven waiting to be seen.

Of those under treatment, 10 were waiting for beds in other parts of the hospital, representing 41 percent of the patient workload.

Of these, 81 percent had already been in emergency longer than eight hours, making them officially "blocked."

The problem was nationwide, but of the five states where two or more tertiary hospitals were analyzed, NSW performed the best and Western Australia the worst.

South Australia and Queensland experienced the biggest deterioration over the three-year period.

College president Dr. Andrew Singer said the results were a "damning indictment of the various governments' unwillingness or inability to address one of the most important needs in healthcare today".

"Our hospital emergency department staff are unable to provide best possible care to all patients because the EDs are overcrowded, and this is the result of the decline in inpatient hospital beds," Singer says. "Nothing will change in our emergency departments until that situation is fixed."

- The Australian http://mercury.tiser.com.au/adclick/SITE=TAUS/AREA=NEWS.NATIONAL/AAMSZ=110X40/pageid=1

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