Ballarat Base Hospital feeling the strain as severe illnesses add to overburdened health system

Grampians Health has warned of high demand at Ballarat Base Hospital and long waiting times at its emergency department.

Ballarat Base Hospital is experiencing high demand across its services. Photo: Chloe Smith.

Ballarat Base Hospital is grappling with high demand, long emergency department waiting times and relatively severe cases of illnesses causing people to stay longer in hospital.

Acting chief executive Ben Kelly said the hospital had endured periods of significant demand in recent months because of Covid and the flu.

As of midnight on Tuesday, 12 patients at Ballarat Hospital had Covid.

“But those numbers, as I’ve spoken to many of you about before, do fluctuate,” Mr Kelly said.

“Covid is very prevalent in our community, as you know.

“There’s potentially under-reporting - there’s people still undertaking testing but may not be self-reporting in the way that they were in the early stages of the pandemic.

“So we know that there’s Covid moving around our community and we also know that there’s flu moving around our community.”

Grampians Health’s Ben Kelly is worried about the impact of Covid on the region’s hospital. Photo: Grampians Health

Last week, 73 people presented to the hospital with flu-like symptoms – fewer than in 2019, but up from 36 at the same time last year.

Mr Kelly said the consequence was that people who usually provided health care beyond a patient’s time in hospital were themselves dealing with illnesses.

As for the emergency department, numbers were “generally okay in volume”, he said, but severity of illness had become the more prevalent problem.

“The problem,” Mr Kelly said, “is the level of acuity that our patients are coming in with, leading to them staying longer in hospital or indeed not being able to discharge as quickly as they would otherwise be, because the places they would be discharged to are not as readily available as they have been in the past as a result of the illnesses moving around in our community.”

Other factors compounded the difficulties providing health care, Mr Kelly said, including staff numbers and emergency surgeries.

“There is certainly the impact of staffing restrictions, and restrictions as a result of people not being well,” he said.

“We’re certainly seeing more emergency surgery cases coming through the Ballarat end of the Grampians Health catchment, and that is continuing to place some limitations on our ability to be able to make greater inroads on our elective theatre wait lists.”

Grampians Health recommended people seek non-emergency medical care at a GP or other clinic while demand at the hospital remains high.