‘Glossed over mistakes’: No quick fix for Qld’s health crisis

The state’s health crisis is so bad that it will take more than a decade to fix, warns an ex-chief of the Metro North emergency departments, writes Des Houghton.

It will take a decade or longer to repair Queensland’s broken health and hospital system says one of the state’s most respected doctors.

If an incoming LNP government tells you it can be fixed in one term, don’t believe them.

So says Chris May, pictured, the former executive director of all the emergency departments (EDs) in the Metro North Hospital and Health Service.

May has gone into retirement disappointed that successive governments have failed to plan for the crises we now face with bed block and overstretched emergency departments.

He, and others, predicted the strife more than two decades ago.

He blames a series of Labor governments – with an interlude of three years of the LNP – who failed to address the worrying challenges facing hospitals in Queensland.

“Why haven’t we done anything to meet the increasing demand for health services?” May says. “That is the golden question, isn’t it?”

“Clinicians, the AMA and the medical colleges have been warning about overcrowding and the lack of access to inpatient beds since the late 1990s.’’

Dr Chris May says there are no quick fixes. Picture: Des Houghton

He has the support of Dr Phillip Kay, another towering figure in Queensland medicine who served as Princess Alexandra Hospital emergency medicine director before his recent retirement. Kay angered bureaucrats 11 years ago when he told them EDs were in trouble, and it was “unethical” to leave patients on trolleys in hallways because of bed shortages.

May points to published research by Dr Drew Richardson in the early 2000s.

“The longer you stay in the emergency department the higher the mortality risk,” May said.

“The longer you stay in ED the worse your outcome as an inpatient and you may die. It’s proven.”

Severe shortages of beds and clinicians means there won’t be any quick fixes.

“We are at a stage where it is going to take 15 to 20 years to remedy faults in the hospital and health system,” he said.

“It won’t happen in three years or four year or five years. The first job is to sit down with clinicians of all persuasions, look at the data and map out where you need the hospitals and what sort of hospitals you need.

“The bureaucracy has to listen to the people and remove the politics from things like health care and police.

“They have to be responsive to what is needed in the community – and not what the political agenda is.

“For years and decades there has been a wall put up by politicians who say how good we are doing, when in fact we are not.

“Politicians put up a very good facade. They say we’re managing this, doing this, we’re adding this … but with little effect.

Heath Minister Shannon Fentiman.

“We have been nibbling at the edges with all sorts of programs that do not address the core problem: We do not have enough beds.

“They have glossed over the mistakes; they have glossed over the failure of planning and Labor is extremely good at propaganda.

“The public really don’t know how bad the system is.”

He said nurses and doctors were suffering burnout.

“They have no idea how hard it is to work in ED.”

At Parliamentary Estimates hearings the Opposition accused the government of hiding data to avoid scrutiny.

Opposition leader David Crisafulli said the state was in “a pretty dark place for transparency”.

Health Minister Shannon Fentiman said she took personal offence at the comment and Crisafulli withdrew it, but not before shadow health minister Ros Bates chimed in and said: “Minister, we know you are desperate, but let’s not make it all about you.”