Editorial: RHH intensive chair plan points to a real crisis

THE bed-shortage issue in our biggest public hospital is now so bad that our dedicated — and no doubt frustrated — clinicians are having to resort to extreme actions.

LET us for a moment put aside the rather bizarre debate that dominated political discussion yesterday about whether a room used to store stuff, and that is referred to as a “storeroom”, is indeed a storeroom ... or not. The fact remains that, as the Mercury revealed yesterday, overcrowding at the Royal Hobart Hospital is so severe that health officials are proposing to put patients due for discharge on trolleys, beds or recliner chairs in places including alcoves — and given a hand bell to ring if they need help.

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Despite Opposition Leader Rebecca White’s claim that the plan was “extremely dangerous”, it was developed by clinicians and we therefore have no reason to believe it is not a well thought-out practical solution to what is, sadly, a very real problem. Indeed, the support given to the proposal by the Australian College of Emergency Medicine suggests that it is.

Health Minister Michael Ferguson yesterday mounted a vigorous defence of the proposal, saying the Government was open to any idea to free up beds during times of heavy demand — and to avoid the situation that happened at the weekend where patients who had been waiting three days for admission to the psychiatric ward were forced to sleep on the floor in the emergency department. He asked: “What is wrong with listening to staff?”

Dr Craig Quarmby, executive clinical director at the Royal Hobart Hospital. Picture: NIKKI DAVIS-JONES

We say, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Instead, what appears to be wrong here is that the bed-shortage issue in our state’s biggest hospital is now so bad that our dedicated — and no doubt frustrated — clinicians are having to resort to such extreme actions.

As Labor’s health spokeswoman Sarah Lovell put it, “it’s what you would expect to see at a time where there is a natural disaster or a flu epidemic or some kind of crisis or catastrophe situation that is outside of the ordinary”.

What Tasmanians would surely prefer to hear from their Health Minister is not that the Opposition has “jumped the shark”, but rather that he has a plan to fix the crisis before such measures have to implemented. Yes, he is right when he says the situation should be resolved when the redeveloped hospital is opened — with its 250 extra beds. But in the meantime the hospital is regularly operating at the highest level of its escalation plan as it struggles to cope with a surge in demand. Reclining seats and trolleys have been brought in to cope with people waiting overnight in the emergency department. All this, and the Health Minister’s response to questions about the issue in Parliament was to go on the attack and suggest the Opposition had run out of ideas in its search for attention — such as when in season five of the 1970s television show Happy Days the character Fonzie jumped over a shark while water-skiing.

Mr Ferguson said yesterday he wanted to defend those dedicated clinicians who — faced with a chronic bed shortage — drew up the hand bells document. Absolutely he should. As we have said in this column on many occasions, they are just doing their best in what is a seriously challenging situation.

Finally, as for that storeroom debate, we note Mr Ferguson also told Parliament: “This is a room that is currently used to store materials.” Case closed.