Emergency departments would have 12 hours to admit patients to hospital ward or transfer them under recommendation

Patients should be allowed to remain in an emergency department for a maximum of 12 hours before they must be admitted to a hospital ward or transferred, new recommendations say

Ambulances ramped at Royal Adelaide Hospital.

Patients should only be allowed to remain in an emergency department for a maximum of 12 hours before they must be admitted to the hospital or transferred, the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine has recommended.

The peak body for emergency medicine in Australia and New Zealand has put forward the proposal in a submission to a State Parliamentary Inquiry into health services in South Australia.

The inquiry is looking into ways to improve the quality, accessibility and affordability of health services, the affect of health reforms in the state, including Transforming Health, and the Federal Government’s funding of State Government services.

The ACED wants SA Health to enforce a 12-hour maximum length of stay in EDs, with mandatory reporting of any case that exceeds this time frame.

It has also renewed its pre-2018 State Election call for mandatory reporting to the Health Minister, coupled with CEO intervention, whenever a person is forced to wait 24 hours in an ED.

A review of each such incident would also be carried out with a report on its findings presented to the Health Minister, under the proposal.

The recommendations aims to reduce overcrowding and ramping at metropolitan hospitals.

“Mandatory reporting in Victoria has reduced the incidence of patients waiting 24 hours,” ACEM president Dr Simon Judkins wrote in the submission.

“Similar mandatory reporting regimes have since been introduced in the Northern Territory, the Australian Capital Territory and announced in Western Australia.

To support its case for enforcing such rules, the ACEM presented a snapshot of the Royal Adelaide Hospital’s ED at 11am on Monday, July 16 2018 when there were 91 patients in the 73-bed department, 45 of whom had been admitted but were waiting for a bed and 11 patients had been waiting for more than 24 hours to access a bed.

It said 10 of the 11 patients who were waiting for longer than 24 hours were classed as “requiring acute mental health care”.

The ACEM also recommended SA Health “act immediately to increase the total number of mental health beds available across the system, including for forensic and adolescent patients”.

Asthma Australia, the SA Mental Health Commission, the Health and Community Services Complaints Commissioner and other stakeholders have also provided feedback on the state’s health system as part of the investigation.

The inquiry continues.