ED patients face huge wait time as elective surgeries are cancelled across the state
Patients are facing huge wait times at SA emergency departments as the state’s health crisis deepens.
SA News
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A “substantial uplift” in Covid presentations and respiratory infections, such as pneumonia, are behind the cancellation of most elective surgery on Thursday, with a statewide Code Yellow internal emergency declared and metropolitan hospitals under siege on Friday morning.
At 7am the flagship Royal Adelaide Hospital was treating 90 people in its 68-capacity ED, with an average 8.5 hour wait to be seen.
Flinders Medical Centre had an average four hour wait to be seen.
SA Health chief executive Robyn Lawrence and chief public health officer Professor Nicola Spurrier called a press conference on Friday morning, following the “unusual” decision to instigate a system-wide shutdown.
As of early Friday, nine elective surgeries were set to be cancelled across the state’s health networks – but that figure is expected to climb.
The SA Health boss said she had urged all priority two and three cases to be pushed back, with some flexibility around day cases.
Watch the press conference below
Dr Lawrence said there had been a substantial uptick in patients presenting to emergency departments in the past month, with a notable increase in not just Covid cases, but respiratory illnesses such as pneumonia and related issues, including heart failure.
Despite the surge in Covid cases, the health boss said she would not be pushing for the reintroduction of mask mandates.
“I think the scenario is quite different to Covid … we’ve got a range of things impacting us this time, we’ve got more beds in the system but we’ve also got more patients in the system,” Dr Lawrence said.
“I don’t think that putting in widespread mandates in our community is going to solve the problem for us.”
Dr Lawrence said there were currently 200 more patients in hospital than the same time last year, putting significant strain on resources.
Warren Lambourne, 49, from Brooklyn Park, presented at the RAH on Saturday after an injury to his hand injury went untreated for a few days and turned into an infection.
Mr Lambourne said he remained in the ED’s overflow area until he was discharged on Friday.
“I was in the overflow area of the department, it’s essentially in the back section of where they do the surgeries,” Mr Lambourne told The Advertiser.
“I had a bed, but we weren’t allowed any visitors and there were another eight – about eight – other patients put up there.
“We didn’t really have a choice about the condition we were put into but it was obvious we all felt very frustrated by our position in the department.”
Mr Lambourne said he spent six days in hospital, which left him convinced the government needs to do more to increase bed numbers.
Meanwhile Simone King, 47, from Salisbury North was in the RAH to have her gallbladder removed.
But due to the decision to cancel elective surgeries, she was discharged.
Ms King said she had been waiting for the procedure for months – and was worried how a “four-to-six week” wait for it to be rescheduled could impact her health.
“I’ve been waiting for this surgery for a really long time and not having it is just going to leave me in a whole lot of pain,” she said.
“I’m worried I’ll have another gallstone.”
Ms King said the overflow was apparent.
“It’s very busy in there, you can see there’s an overload but I’m just left feeling very frustrated.”
The $2.7bn RAH, built on a contract signed in 2011 paying $1m a day until 2046 for maintenance and non-clinical services, was supposed to be built to cope with future population growth.
But Health Minister Chris Picton said, across the health system, “we are using every single available bed we have but we need more beds”.
These include patients being treated in cubicles and in disused storerooms, with little capacity to handle a sudden surge or for significant numbers of casualties from an unexpected disaster.
Mr Picton also revealed all metropolitan intensive care units have been full this week, blaming a “cocktail” of surging flu, Covid and RSV cases for the much of the demand.
He noted the government is building the equivalent of a new Queen Elizabeth Hospital in terms of adding extra beds to the system in the next two years.
The statewide cancellation of elective surgery except category 1 and urgent pediatric category 2 is opened ended and means the elective list which has blown out to more than 21,000 patients including more than 4000 listed as overdue will continue to balloon.
The Code Yellow means most staff meetings have been cancelled so doctors can concentrate on patients — ironically, one major meeting cancelled due to lack of available doctors was on how to deal with ramping and improve patient flow.
While SA has the nation’s highest per capita rate for flu vaccinations, it is relatively low across all age groups and experts say the balmy autumn weather has lulled the public into a false sense of security to delay getting their shot.
Opposition leader David Speirs claimed “the health system is collapsing under Labor” with things likely to get far worse when the cold winter weather finally hits.
He said paramedics had told the opposition this week had the “worst day of ramping in state history” — all metropolitan hospitals have been on Code White treating more people in EDs than their capacity every day this week.
“Peter Malinauskas promised to ‘fix ramping’, but our hospitals have never been so overloaded and on five consecutive days this week not a single bed was free for sick South Australians in need,” Mr Speirs said.
“To see this chaos in the week before winter is alarming because the cold weather is yet to hit and we know, when it does, even more demand will be placed on our hospitals and frontline healthcare workers.”
But Mr Picton said this week’s glut was the product of previous governments’ failures to appropriately expand the health system.
“I think that there was a there was a decision that’s been made over decades (and) a view that there was too many things in the hospital system,” he said.
“I think Covid broke the back of that. I think that we’ve now seen patients having to stay longer, blockages in terms of aged care (and) additional demands on the system.
“ We need to turn around what was a very long term decline in bed numbers per capita and really significantly increase the number of beds that we have in the system … and that’s what we’re doing.”
Originally published as ED patients face huge wait time as elective surgeries are cancelled across the state
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