Royal Children’s Hospital wait times ease but pressure remains

Emergency wait times at the Royal Children’s Hospital are “normal” after crushing delays — but its chief executive warns it could happen again.

The Royal Children’s Hospital says extensive wait times which prompted it to tell parents not to bring sick children to the emergency department have eased.

However, while the crisis that gripped the hospital’s emergency department on Monday night has eased, on Tuesday morning children still faced wait times of up to five hours.

A Royal Children’s Hospital spokeswoman said as of 7am, the wait time was four to five hours.

“Overnight, there were 100 patients in the ED at 9pm, by 1am there were 90 and as of 7am there were only 14,” she said.

By midday, wait times had fallen further, with the Royal Children’s Hospital live tracker rating the emergency department as “very busy”.

This rating falls below the highest level — which indicates wait times of four or more hours — but does mean emergency is operating above “normal” levels and families are still waiting more than one hour.

On Tuesday morning, families still faced a wait time of up to five hours. Picture: David Crosling

It follows desperate families with sick children on Monday night facing wait times of 12 hours as the hospital dealt with “unprecedented demand” and people were ­advised to seek help elsewhere.

At one stage 10 sick children presented in a 10-minute period, and families waited in a queue outside.

RCH chief of medicine Tom Connell said a further 100 children were waiting in emergency for treatment on Monday night.

“Our numbers for the ED are up about 15 per cent on the corresponding time period pre-pandemic,” he said.

“We’ve had high numbers of viral infections in children, which is a little bit unseasonal for us in terms of the type of viruses that we’ve been seeing.

“It’s not Covid … but we’re just seeing a lot of viral infections, fever, respiratory tract symptoms and things like that, coupled with our usual traumas. It’s all just come together.”

Royal Children’s Hosptial chief executive Bernadette McDonald. Picture: David Crosling

RCH chief executive Bernadette McDonald said extra staff brought in had worked through the night to address the crunch.

“We have had a very good night, we’ve had extra staff on overnight and we have cleared the backlog,” she told Today.

“It is a little calmer in the ED, the waiting room is not as full of patients waiting to be seen but it did take all night.”

Ms McDonald said the latest Covid wave was again requiring staff to isolate and pressure on the emergency department would remain acute.

“It could happen again unfortunately – the workplace issues are not going away anytime soon.

Meanwhile, a top doctor has warned the healthcare crisis will continue “well past Christmas”.

Hospital staff under pressure

Vu Do, who travelled with his son, Madden to the hospital on Friday in an ambulance, said his son was seen quickly but noticed how stressed the staff were on Monday night.

“It was pretty busy, you could tell they were under a bit of pressure,” he told the Herald Sun.

“The waiting rooms were pretty full.

“There was no wait time for us, we were lucky.”

His son Madden was in good spirits after injuring his neck as he fell from a window at his home on Friday.

“It didn’t really hurt at first, I actually don’t remember much of it,” he said.

“I came to the hospital in an ambulance but I don’t remember that either.”

A mother of another emergency patient said her son’s admission to the Royal Children’s was also “pretty smooth” overnight.

Vu Du and his son Madden at the Royal Children’s Hospital. Picture: Regan Hodge

“We came in by an ambulance and we were seen pretty much straight away,” the mother said, who wished not to be named.

“There was barely any wait time… I guess at 3am we’d missed the rush.”

Her son, who was rushed to the hospital in the early hours of Tuesday morning after injuring his arm, said he was feeling good.

Another mother, who was taking her young son home after receiving stitches to his head, said Tuesday’s emergency wait time was back to normal.

“We were in and out of emergency just today and it was pretty quick,” the mother said, who wished not to be named.

“I saw on the news last night that people were waiting 12 hours yesterday and last night so I was a bit (concerned).”

Zoubaida Elhajje brought her 18-month-old daughter, Ava, to the Royal Children’s Hospital on Monday night after a rash appeared all over her child’s body.

However, the worried mum left to seek alternative treatment after being told she would have to wait more than five hours.

“She has got rashes all over her,” she said. “I’m a bit concerned because it has spread all over her body.

“It’s serious, and there are no doctors available, we wanted to prevent it from getting worse.”

Baldeep Dhaliwal and his four-year-old son, Fateh, outside the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne. Picture: Mitch Ryan

Ms Elhajje said most of the staff at the hospital “seemed really run-down”.

Father of one, Baldeep Dhaliwal, was left speechless after the family waited six hours until his four-year-old son, Fateh, could see a doctor on Monday.

The Epping family went to RCH after their son stopped eating.

“I have no words,” Mr Dhaliwal said.

“A nurse said they wanted to prioritise the serious cases, but if something had happened during those six hours who is responsible? He wasn’t able to breathe this morning.”

Royal Children’s Hospital was experiencing wait times of up to 12 hours. Picture: Josie Hayden

The RCH rush comes after all elective surgery was temporarily paused at The Alfred for a week, with reduced staff numbers due to Covid ­infections among clinicians.

Australian Medical Association Victoria president Roderick McRae has issued a dire warning, saying more hospitals would struggle in coming weeks.

“This is going to continue,” he said.

“It’s not terribly different from almost 12 months ago when the Omicron variant smashed us.

“We clearly have a lack of capacity. We welcome the undertaking and promises as we went towards the election, about increasing capacity, but that’s probably six to 10 years away.”

An Alfred Health spokesman apologised to all patients “affected by this difficult situation”, but said it was necessary to ensure they can care for current patients and conduct emergency lifesaving surgery.

“We believe we are at the peak of this wave’s impact within our health service, and efforts are under way to reschedule impacted patients,” he said.

“We know how hard this is for patients waiting for a procedure, and this is not a decision we have taken lightly.”

Elective surgery was temporarily paused at The Alfred for a week, with reduced staff numbers due to Covid ­infections among clinicians.

On Monday night as patients poured into the RCH, staff were called in on their days off.

Staff were battling a combination of a high number of “extremely unwell children” in emergency and high levels of acuity in patients.

“It is not safe to discharge patients to free up beds,” read a statement issued by the RCH.

“We will always treat the most seriously ill children first, which unfortunately means some patients with less serious conditions may experience longer waiting times. We anticipate wait times for these less seriously unwell patients will potentially reach more than 12 hours this evening.”

Parents were urged to consider alternatives such as Nurse on Call, as it was revealed more than 50 per cent of the patients who arrived on Monday afternoon were triaged as lower acuity.

Deputy Premier says not just Covid to blame

On Tuesday, Deputy Premier Jacinta Allan said the “cumulative impact” of Covid over the past three years had created pressures on hospitals like the RCH but there were also other issues which had blown out wait times.

“There are people who are not coming to work because of ill health and that puts pressure on a health system on any given day,” she said.

“I do know that the health minister and the health department are working closely with the Royal Children’s and indeed, with all of our hospital services to help them work through these periods.

“As was reported by the chief executive herself on the radio this morning, it wasn’t just the Covid factors.

“There was an unprecedented demand that we saw last night and yesterday and into last night at the Royal Children’s Hospital.”

Ms Allan said it was important to support the state’s GP network to help more people receive treatment without needing to go to hospital.

She flagged that the federal government was also examining improvements in this area.

“We are taking a number of our own steps to address some of those challenges,” Ms Allan

“That interface between the GP system and our emergency department system is a real key one.

“As a mum, I can understand when your child is unwell or sick. You want to make sure that they’re getting the best quality of care.

“And if they’re critically ill, absolutely families should continue to call triple-0.

“But there are other areas where you can get advice.”

Ms Allan said she had previously used nurse on call services and that Victorian families could also access the virtual emergency department or local hospitals for help with their sick children.

“I’d encourage families to consider those options as they look for getting the best possible care for their child, “ she said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he had incredible sympathy for any parent with a sick child.

He said leaders would receive a report at national cabinet on Friday about how pressure can be taken off hospitals and how they can achieve a more integrated health care system.

Mr Albanese said too many people were turning up to emergency departments because there weren’t any alternatives.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese admits there is “real pressure” on the country’s healthcare system. Picture: Morgan Sette

“We know that there is real pressure on our healthcare system and we know that part of that is problems with primary health care,” the Prime Minister said.

“That’s why we, during the election campaign, committed to urgent care clinics that would provide bulk billing services for urgent care.

“Things like a kid with a broken arm or a child who needs assistance and doesn’t really need to be in an emergency department of the local hospital.”

Mr Albanese said that work was ongoing, adding the problem could not be solved in “a week or a month or even six months”.

“But it is something that we’re committed to providing real solutions on,” he said.

This week’s crisis comes just days after Ambulance Victoria was forced to call a code red and Victoria’s health system was placed under new measures to combat “increasing demand” amid Covid’s fourth wave.

Victoria moved to stage three of a four-part plan on Saturday, which gives hospitals the power to cancel leave and increase telehealth usage.

A chief health officer update announcing the move said it was “a reflection of both high numbers of people with Covid in hospital, particularly across our metropolitan health services, as well as ongoing furlough challenges at all sites leading into the holiday period”. On that same Saturday, Ambulance Victoria issued a code red in the early hours of the morning, warning it was experiencing an “extremely high demand” for ambulances.

The code red lasted three hours and Ambulance Victoria warned it expected “ambulance and hospitals will be even busier over coming weeks”.