SA election 2018: ED doctors call for election winner to address health system ‘in crisis’

EMERGENCY department doctors say SA’s health system is “in crisis” and have demanded whoever wins Saturday’s election moves immediately to repair it.

• Nurses and doctors deliver their new RAH diagnoses
• Interactive: Explore the Royal Adelaide Hospital
• RAH check up: The hoorahs and faux pas
• Ambos being diverted as hospital EDs overflow
• SA Health apologises for making man wait at RAH for five days
• My RAH hell — Seven hours waiting in pain

EMERGENCY department doctors say SA’s health system is “in crisis” and have demanded whoever wins Saturday’s election moves immediately to repair it.

The plea, at 10am, came as SA Health data showed the metropolitan public hospital system had 64 people who had been treated in EDs still waiting for beds in wards, including 13 who had been waiting for 12-to-24 hours and two who had been waiting more than 24 hours.

The $2.3 billion flagship Royal Adelaide Hospital had 31 people waiting for beds.

Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM) South Australian Faculty Chair Dr Thiru Govindan revealed gridlocks and long waits in hospital EDs had reached the point a patient had to be shifted to intensive care in another hospital after waiting for care in a major hospital.

“The South Australian health system is in crisis. Acute care bed shortages, emergency department overcrowding and ambulance ramping are out of control,” Dr Govindan said.

“This is putting patients at an unnecessary higher risk of harm, creates an unsafe working environment for emergency department staff and fundamentally impairs our ability to provide high level care to the people of our community in their most vulnerable time.

“For example, we have seen waits of over 24 hours for patients in the emergency department to get an inpatient bed, and recently a sick patient had to be transferred out of a major hospital emergency department to an intensive care unit in another hospital.

“Solutions throughout the hospitals, the whole of health system and our emergency departments that address these issues must be found.”

ACEM says solutions must include a combination of increased inpatient resources and improved hospital management processes that involves emergency physician clinical expertise in hospital planning.

The College is also calling for mandatory reporting to the Health Minister of cases involving patients waiting more than 24 hours in the emergency department.

The Advertiser has run a series of reports highlighting patients regularly waiting more than 24 hours for a bed, including a recent period where two patients waited for more than four days.

ACEM also wants the controversial electronic data record system, Enterprise Patient Administration System (EPAS), to be improved to be fit for clinical use in emergency departments.

ACEM President Dr Simon Judkins added: “We need the political parties of this state to realise they need to step up and be accountable, as everybody who enters an emergency department deserves quality care from dedicated professionals, in a timely manner and with the greatest chance of positive outcomes.”