Elective surgery cases postponed as winter demand in emergency departments soared
DEMAND on emergency departments over winter saw 177 cases of elective surgery postponed as hospitals juggled resources to deal with the most urgent cases.
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THE crush of demand in emergency departments forced the postponement of 177 elective surgery procedures over winter, data obtained by The Advertiser shows.
As hospitals activated their winter-demand strategies to deal with sometimes overwhelming pressure, the procedures were postponed between June 1 and October 7.
These included 14 category 1 cases – the most urgent – as well as 71 category 2 cases and 92 category 3 procedures.
The postponements occurred in Adelaide’s major hospitals which were regularly dealing with ambulances ramping as EDs were operating above official capacity – 31 cases at Flinders Medical Centre, 55 at Lyell McEwin Hospital, 30 at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital and 61 at the Royal Adelaide Hospital.
Revelations of the postponements follow the ugly stoush between the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation and State Government when nurses threatened to cancel category 3 elective surgery unless pressure was eased on EDs.
The Government this month has opened 30 beds in rural hospitals, contracted an extra 20 beds in private hospitals, opened 11 mental health beds and is working on plans to reactive the Repatriation General Hospital to ease the strain.
SA Health noted postponing non-urgent elective surgery was a longstanding part of its winter-demand management strategy.
It released a statement saying: “In times of high demand across our hospitals, we make no apology for postponing non-urgent elective surgery when there are patients requiring urgent treatment for more serious conditions.”
The data also shows a blowout in time wasted on inter-hospital ambulance transfers.
On average, there were almost 12 more transfers a week reported during this winter, compared to winter 2017.
This fuelled a rise in the time of lost care due to transfers by 23.3 hours a day on average to 39.2 hours.
This relates to the time taken for a paramedic to officially hand over a patient to a clinician in a hospital.
Health Minister Stephen Wade is setting up a task force to see how transfers can be made more efficient so ambulances with stable patients are not stuck ramped in hospital car parks.
An SA Health statement says: “Our newly announced working group will work with unions and stakeholders to look at ways of improving the co-ordination of patient transfers across the system, in order to reduce external triaging and wait times at our hospitals.”
The data also shows the average ED visit time during winter in metropolitan public hospitals rose 24 minutes to five hours and eight minutes – well above the national target of a maximum of four hours.
The proportion of time spent with EDs in code white – occupancy above 125 per cent of official capacity – was 16 per cent.
However, in better news, this was lower compared with the previous winter when it was 21 per cent.