Data reveals alarming rise in critically ill patients pushing Victorian hospitals to brink
Top priority patients in Victoria jumped from an average of 26 a day in mid 2018 to 42 by June 2024, adding to the workloads of the state’s emergency departments — as the population gets older, fatter and sicker.
Victoria’s emergency departments are grappling with record numbers of patients arriving in critical conditions, as an increasingly sicker population places hospitals under pressure.
Skyrocketing figures, from AIHW, show ‘category one — resuscitation’ patients in Victoria jumped from an average of 26 a day, in July 2018, to a staggering 42 by June 2024.
The trend, which adds to emergency departments’ workloads, is expected to continue in the coming years and is under renewed focus ahead of Friday’s health ministers’ meeting and ongoing state-federal hospital funding negotiations.
Experts say the rising acuity reflects both shifting demographics — our population is ageing, sedentary and levels of obesity and chronic illness are rising — and wider healthcare problems.
Some of the figures are simply the consequences of issues including poorer primary care access, limited mental health beds and wait-times for community aged care and disability beds.
The release of the figures comes on the eve of the state, territory and federal health ministers’ meeting on Friday, with the states urging Mr Butler to increase its share of funding to 42.5 per cent by 2030 and 45 per cent by 2035.
Monash University researcher and Melbourne emergency physician Dr Andy Lim published research earlier this year show category one presentations in Victoria jumped from 10,566 in 2018-2019, to almost 16,000 last financial year — far outpacing population growth.
Dr Lim said the figures should be “alarming”, but confirmed what healthcare workers already knew to be true.
“It’s getting worse and worse,” he said.
“We’re all hoping things can be done at a higher level.
“The work is getting harder and harder and there needs to be a multi-pronged strategy in all directions to address avoidable admissions, expand hospital capacity and beds and staffing, and overall improvement in performance.”
Australasian College for Emergency Medicine Victorian Branch Chair Dr Mark Putland said there had been a “steep increase” in overall emergency numbers and higher-acuity cases since the early 2000s.
“We have patients come into hospital with conditions that might have been turned around months before in the community in a system where it was easier to access care and where that care was better,” he said.
“Obesity, diabetes keep going up.
“Patients with less urgency are actually decreasing in overall numbers, particularly in the last five years.”
He said it was easy to “point the finger” at people seeking unnecessary care when hospital wait times were high, but “that’s just frankly not true”.
“What we’re seeing is fewer and fewer people who don’t need our care coming, and more and more people who really do,” he said.
He said bed block, whereby medically fit to be discharged patients waiting for aged care or disability care beds in the community are stuck in hospital wards — who then cannot admit a patient from the emergency department — was also an issue.
“We have a Federal government that funds aged care, disability care and primary care and state governments are responsible for hospital care,” he said.
He said this federal-state process needed to place patients at the centre of the conversation, rather than shifting blame “back and forth”.
However, federal health minister Mark Butler said the latest data also showed that “Medicare Urgent Care Clinics have been a game changer”.
He referenced BHI figures which BHI also reported a drop in semi-urgent and non-urgent ER presentations, which decreased by 5.1 per cent and 8.7 per cent respectively.
He said the federally-funded centres have put “less pressures on NSW hospitals” because patients were presenting at the free clinics.
“It is crucial that all governments work to address the growing pressures in the public hospital system,” he said.
“Of course we don’t want any Australian to spend longer in hospital when they can be receiving care back at home or in aged care,” he added, flagging the government’s expanded Support at Home packages to allow older Australians to receive care at home.
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Originally published as Data reveals alarming rise in critically ill patients pushing Victorian hospitals to brink
