ER Patients “Treated in Driveways” in New South Wales Hospitals

Every day, it seems, the Australian papers have health care problem-related stories—just like we do in the States.  A front page headline , “Hospital Patients Treated in Driveway,” in today’s Sydney Morning Herald, certainly caught my eye.  It seems ambulance patients are unable to get into ERs quickly.  From the story:

AMBULANCE crews are being forced to care for a soaring backlog of patients in hospital loading areas and corridors because overcrowded emergency departments cannot take over. Internal Health Department figures obtained by the Herald show that in recent weeks several of Sydney’s largest hospitals accepted only about half of the ambulance patients taken there within 30 minutes – far short of the recommended 90 per cent.

Prince of Wales, Blacktown, Westmead, Royal North Shore and Sutherland hospitals and the Calvary Mater in Newcastle were the worst affected in May and June.In one week, Blacktown took over the care of only a third of its ambulance patients within 30 minutes, taking ambulances off the road because paramedics must wait with people they have transported. The figures present a grim portrait of NSW emergency departments as the states negotiate emergency performance targets with the federal government. Meeting these would attract bonus payments under health reforms agreed by the Council of Australian Governments.

The cause seems to be too few hospital beds:

The president of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine, Sally McCarthy, said the delays were due to a lack of acute hospital beds available to keep pace with the rising admissions to acute hospitals. ”It’s just a gradual decline,” she said. Emergency doctors spent up to 40 per cent of their time caring for people who needed in-patient care but could not find a bed, she said. Solutions such as paying paramedics to work shifts in hospitals were a distraction from the need to increase bed numbers and ”improve patient flow” in hospitals.

I don’t know enough about the way health care is financed here Down Under to comment on the cause of this awful situation.  But it is sure interesting how many of the same issues that roil the USA also are roiling Australia.