Minister John Hill's fury at patient death claims

CLAIMS that more people die from hospital overcrowding and admission logjams than in road accidents have escalated into a furious row between senior doctors and a state government.

CLAIMS that more people die from hospital overcrowding and admission logjams than in road accidents have escalated into a furious row between senior doctors and a state government.

South Australian Health Minister John Hill expressed "outrage" yesterday after a senior emergency specialist, Tony Eliseo, claimed the crisis was costing 150 lives a year in that state alone, rivalling the road toll.

Dr Eliseo, speaking on behalf of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine, said this was consistent withresearch showing that overcrowding and delays in moving patients from emergency departments to a hospital bed caused 1500 extra deaths nationally.

"This is the equivalent to ... the national road toll, which is quite extraordinary," Dr Eliseo said.

Last year, 1606 people died on the nation's roads, and deaths are tracking 9 per cent higher for this year, with 970 logged to this month.

But Mr Hill rejected any comparison between the road toll and hospital-related deaths.

"I am outraged by that figure," he told ABC radio in Adelaide.

"It's a theoretical statement made by academics who have put those figures together.

"I don't know of any basis on which to make it.

"If there is any evidence of anybody dying in our hospitals as a result of these kinds of issues, then they should be referred to the Coroner, and I hope the doctor has done that."

But Dr Eliseo, 41, an emergency medicine specialist of nine years' experience, stood by his numbers.

He said they came from a study that had been forwarded to the state authorities by the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine.

"I would be very surprised and disappointed if those figures have not made their way up to the minister," Dr Eliseo told The Australian.

College chief executive Jennifer Freeman confirmed that the estimate of 1500 deaths related to emergency department overcrowding and delayed hospital admission -- known as access block -- was contained in research presented to a recent summit on the issue by Drew Richardson, an associate professor of emergency medicine at Canberra Hospital.

Dr Eliseo was the second emergency specialist to challenge Mr Hill publicly, after the minister told state parliament on Wednesday the pressure had come off public hospital emergency departments over winter. Mr Hill attributed this to a government advertising campaign urging people with minor ailments to see a GP rather than turn up at hospital.

Presentations to public hospital emergency departments in Adelaide had dropped by 7.1 per cent on last year, Mr Hill said.

David Teubner, an emergency physician at Flinders Medical Centre in the city's south, said access block meant a quarter of emergency patients requiring hospital admission waited more than eight hours for a bed.

Dr Eliseo said delays in admitting patients increased the risk of adverse outcomes, including death.

Patients waiting in emergency, sometimes on trolleys in corridors and other public spaces, could not be seen as frequently by medical staff as in a ward, he said.

They were also exposed to greater risks of infection, of complications or of their condition being compounded by reduced access to toilets and other facilities.

Dr Eliseo said patients could wait for days in emergency before a hospital bed became available. He was aware of one case in which this had stretched to 18 days. The delays were especially acute for mental health admissions, he said.