Emergency departments now spend more than a third of their time caring for patients who are waiting on trolleys for ward beds, the latest snapshot of “access block” shows.

Access block can be fixed for $3 billion - www.6minutes.com.au  Article by Michael Woodhead

 Emergency departments now spend more than a third of their time caring for patients who are waiting on trolleys for ward beds, the latest snapshot of “access block” shows.

Figures compiled nationally by the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM) from 90 major emergency departments  show that more than 40% of patients were waiting for ward beds, and 77% of those had been in the ED for more than eight hours.

The “snapshot” found access block was a nationwide phenomenon with Western Australia the worst affected state and NSW coping the best.

“Emergency staff are very good at what they are trained for – resuscitating the critically ill, identifying serious disease, and starting the right treatments. But once they have diagnosed your heart attack or broken hip, then you need to go from the emergency department to the coronary care unit or the operating theatre, not stay lying on a trolley, said study author A/Prof Drew Richardson at the Access Block Summit in Melbourne.

AMA Vice President, Dr Gary Speck, said that breaking access block would require a cash injection of more than $3 billion to fund at least 3,750 extra beds and the associated staff and infrastructure so public hospitals can cope with demand and operate at internationally-accepted safe bed occupancy levels of 85 per cent or less.

“The bottom line is more hospital beds are needed to break access block,” he said.

He said ideas such as co-locating GP services and telephone advice services won’t fix the ED access problem.

“Governments cannot keep pretending that trying to get everyone healthy will be the cure for access block. People will still get sick, will still need to go to hospital and public hospitals will still need more beds,” he said. 

Source: www.6minutes.com.au  - article by Michael Woodhead -12 September 2008