SA Health plea as records broken in night from hell with ED system operating one-third above capacity
A desperate memo has emerged revealing just how urgent the situation became as Adelaide is warned hospital waits will get worse this month.
Ambulance patients are waiting up to 25 hours to get into hospital as paramedic crews spend their entire 12-hour shifts on the ramp with one patient — with grim warnings things are getting worse.
In the past two days there have been up to 43 ambulances queued in car parks as EDs struggle to cope.
At times there have been almost 440 patients being treated despite there being just 333 official ED beds across the metropolitan system — believed to be a record.
A memo obtained by The Advertiser shows desperate officials pleading with staff to fast track discharges, send patients to private and regional hospitals, and skip non-urgent cases as patients are being left in corridors and wait times blow out.
Ambulance Employees Association state secretary Paul Ekkelboom said June was the second worst month for ramping on record but this month is on track to be far worse.
He cast doubt on the state government's pledge to “fix ramping” before the next election despite more beds opening, saying “we need to look at doing things differently.”
Ambulance crews as well as communications staff are struggling with burnout and psychological fatigue, he warned.
“This is breaking people, it is not sustainable,” he said.
“Trying to care for a patient for in excess of 12 hours on the ramp, there is a loss of dignity for the patient and it is impacting on our members emotionally.”
Mr Ekkelboom cited the case of a patient who, with delays to be attended to followed by a long wait on the ramp, endured a 25 hour wait from the time of the triple 0 call to actually getting inside a hospital.
“This is not an ambulance problem, the hospitals cannot get patients through the back door to open up space in EDs,” he said.
At one stage this week the Royal Adelaide Hospital was treating 89 people in its 69 capacity ED but 58 were waiting for a ward bed — more than half stuck there for more than 12 hours.
SA Salaried Medical Officers Association chief industrial officer Bernadette Mulholland said SA Health’s Winter Plan is “already failing.”
“We are consistently seeing our Emergency Departments well past the capacity they are built or staffed for,” she said. “Each day it’s getting worse – and we are only in the sixth week of winter. Day in and day out it is unrelenting demand without supporting resources.
“Even some Triage Category 1 patients are now not able to receive the immediate care they need, let alone Category 2 and 3.”
Ms Mulholland said EDs also are seeing increased violence.
“SASMOA was advised on Tuesday that surgeons in CALHN are to review elective surgery of all categories, including potentially pushing back the most urgent elective surgery,” she said. “It’s a massive failure of infrastructure and workforce planning.”
Central Adelaide Local Health Network executive Naomi Heinrich told staff by memo to: “Focus on safely discharging patients who are ready to leave hospital and/or refer them to an out-of-hospital service provider where possible.”
Other actions ordered include maximising capacity in private hospitals and deferring non-urgent cases.
The state government has blamed the federal government for part of the problem, noting hospitals remain filled with many patients medically ready for discharge who should be in federally-funded aged care or NDIS accommodation.
With the priority on dealing with emergency cases, the elective surgery queue has blown out to 24,072 cases including 5895 overdue.
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Originally published as SA Health plea as records broken in night from hell with ED system operating one-third above capacity
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