More than 500 patients left on stretchers as ‘rapid offloads’ soar

More than 500 ambulance patients were left on stretchers in overcrowded emergency hallways at four Brisbane hospitals last month as the sites dealt with an escalating beds crisis. A whopping 365 of those patients were ditched at the one hospital.

MORE than 500 ambulance patients were left on stretchers in overcrowded emergency hallways in Brisbane’s south last month as hospitals dealt with an escalating beds crisis.

The Courier-Mail can reveal 524 patients were unloaded at four Metro South hospitals under the contentious “rapid offload” policy in March — a whopping 365, or 70 per cent, to the under-stress Logan Hospital.

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The figures put context to last week’s extraordinary standoff ­between Logan emergency (ED) nurses and paramedics over rapid offloads, which allow paramedics to park patients on temporary trolleys while they await an ED bed and get back on the road.

Rapid offloads numbers. Source: Queensland Ambulance Service

It was revealed in last Thursday’s Courier-Mail a now-withdrawn memo directed hospital staff to ignore the policy and tell paramedics to “ramp” outside, amid doctor complaints the policy put patients at risk.

Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) figures show that there were just 85 rapid offloads at Logan, Princess Alexandra, Queen Elizabeth II and Redland EDs in April last year when the policy began.

A whopping 365, or 70 per cent, of patients left in limbo on stretchers were at Logan Hospital. Picture: AAP/Richard Walker

They show that Logan consistently shoulders the majority of rapid offloads.

Last week’s stoush prompted Director-General Michael Walsh to admit rapid offloads weren’t working smoothly at Metro South hospitals even as he directed hospital staff to find “appropriate” places to put surplus patients.

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Medical professionals say the crisis is being fed by a lack of ­general beds that stop ED ­patients being admitted and ­creates a bottleneck, as well as skyrocketing ED presentations.

It’s understood a newly appointed Metro South chief operating officer will oversee improvements in the Patient ­Access Co-ordination Hub (PACS) system, which tracks QAS jobs and hospital workloads and directs paramedics to avoid overstressed EDs at critical times.

QAS assistant commissioner John Hammond admitted that paramedics couldn’t always ­follow PACS advice.

“We have to take patients to the closest, most appropriate hospital if they are critically ill,” he said. “We can’t simply avoid Logan all together.”

March was the QAS’s busiest month in the past year, with 15,629 people calling triple-0.

“Even with the best distribution practices, the system will come under pressure when we have those big surges,” Mr Hammond said.

The raw data shows the Director-General’s insistence that just 1.9 per cent of all ambulance arrivals to Metro South hospitals are rapid offloads is misleading.

That figure is a yearly average and the proportion has been increasing, with 3.35 per cent of the 15,629 QAS transfers in March being rapid offloads.

Originally published as More than 500 patients left on stretchers as ‘rapid offloads’ soar