Premier Steven Miles’ ‘car crash’ hospital claims rubbished by medical boss Dr Liz Rushbrook
A top medical boss at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital has discredited sensational claims made by Premier Steven Miles that road trauma victims were to blame for the choked service.
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Sensational claims by Premier Steven Miles that road trauma victims were to blame for a choked hospital have been discredited by a top medical boss.
In a saga labelled a “car crash” by the LNP, the Premier has been slammed for pointing the finger at careless Queensland drivers for putting pressure on healthcare, after the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital was forced to cancel surgeries due to a bed shortage.
Mr Miles on Saturday claimed the pressure on the 1000-bed hospital was due to the surge in road-related trauma cases.
“What we’ve had in recent weeks is a series of terrible road accidents,” Mr Miles said.
“When they occur, they put enormous pressure on the RBWH.
“As a result of that road carnage they needed to reschedule some planned surgery.”
But the Chief Medical Officer for Metro North, the health district that the RBWH is in, Doctor Liz Rushbrook said the hospital hitting capacity was actually due to a surge of respiratory illness.
Queensland Health has reported a spike in flu patients with a 29 per cent jump in occupied bed days last week.
Dr Rushbrook said another contributor was patients presenting to the emergency department instead of to their GP or going to the government “satellite hospitals” and urgent care clinics.
“The RBWH has not experienced a substantial spike in car crashes or trauma cases,” Dr Liz Rushbrook said.
“The hospital is always ready to deal with trauma cases.”
Asked on Tuesday if it was appropriate to blame car crashes as the cause of swamped hospitals, Health Minister Shannon Fentiman said: “I don’t think that is the case at all.”
“I understand that some elective surgeries were rescheduled because (staff) were in emergency surgery dealing with people that had been in huge trauma, road accidents and other accidents, and that is just the normal course of business for our hospitals,” she said.
“They have to make those judgments every day, they’re doing their best to save people’s lives and perform that emergency surgery.”
RBWH has a top-class trauma unit treating patients from across Queensland. The 1000-bed hospital was still operating at capacity on Tuesday.
Shadow Health Minister Ros Bates slammed the Premier’s comments.
“The car crash Queenslanders blame for the health crisis is 10 years of a chaotic Labor government that is getting more accident prone and desperate by the day,” she said.
The Herston hospital faced a nine per cent increase in demand over the last week while all EDs across the Metro North Hospital and Health Service, including The Prince Charles Hospital, Redcliffe Hospital and Caboolture Hospital, had an up tick of 5.4 per cent in the same period.
The number of patients presenting to the four emergency departments by ambulance increased by 5.7 per cent.
Dr Rushbrook encouraged those who need care to take advantage of the range of services available to them, including virtual emergency services.
While 940 people a day have flooded through Metro North EDs in the last week the two Satellite Hospitals’ Minor Injury and Illness Centres at Caboolture and Kallangur are seeing 170 a day between them and the three Medicare Urgent Care Centres at Kedron, Murrumba Down and Morayfield see a few hundred a day in total.
The health minister hailed the satellite hospital at Ripley a big success taking pressure off Ipswich Hospital.
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