Hospital emergency crowding gets worse in 2010
MORE than one third of all hospital emergency department patients are waiting more than eight hours before getting access to the bed they need, the LNP said today.
Shadow Minister for Health Mark McArdle said the first emergency department performance report for 2010 shows that emergency departments began the year even more crowded and dysfunctional than they were at the end of 2009.1
“A lack of hospital beds meant that 34 per cent of people who presented to a Queensland emergency department in January 2010 had to wait more than eight hours to access a bed, up from 31 per cent in December 2009.
“What’s worse, 15 per cent waited an agonising 12 hours in January to access a bed, up from 12 per cent in December 2009.
“This is just not good enough —the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine is attributing a 20 to 30 per cent excess mortality rate to these emergency department delays.2
“People are literally dying because they are not receiving treatment quickly enough.”
Mr McArdle said some patients were also forced to wait outside the hospital, with 38 per cent of all patients who arrived by ambulance in January 2010 enduring ramping outside the hospital – up from 36 per cent in December 2009.
“Ambulance officers spent 3408 hours, or almost 142 days, in just one month parked outside Queensland hospitals waiting for space to become available for their patients inside the hospital,” he said.
“This is an increase of 495 hours spent ramping in January than in December.
“Queenslanders are tired of the lies and the excuses from Bligh and Labor — they want proper infrastructure and a health system that works.”
“For a long time now the LNP has strongly advocated local hospital boards combined with efficient use of funds as part solution to Labor’s crippling health crises.
“What we don’t want imposed on local hospital boards is a new federal bureaucracy in addition to a state bureaucracy.
“A health system with extra layers of bureaucracy will do nothing to reduce waiting times for Queenslanders in our emergency departments.
1 http://www.health.qld.gov.au/performance/ed-perfrep-Jan10.pdf
2 Forero, R., and Ken Hillman. 2008. Access Block and Overcrowding: A Literature Review. Prepared for the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine, September.