Peak healthcare bodies in Victoria are calling for real-time data on emergency departments, warning hospital staff are being forced to work “blind” amid unprecedented pressure on the system.
The state’s overcrowded emergency departments have resulted in patients increasingly waiting more than 24 hours before being transferred to an inpatient bed.
The Australasian College for Emergency Medicine has labelled the situation in hospitals across the country a “national emergency”, and it’s Victorian chair, Dr Mya Cubitt, said hospitals needed a statewide dashboard with real-time data.
Cubitt said the data would allow emergency departments across the state to better work together and improve patient safety, and should be made public.
“In Victoria, we are working really blind, especially in the area of emergency medicine,” she said.
“We don’t have good visibility of the patients who are in ED. We don’t have good visibility of the workforce and bed availability [in] our EDs. And therefore, we can’t all together, see where the overcrowding is occurring.”
The Australian Medical Association’s Victorian president, Dr Roderick McRae, said real-time data was “logical.”
“I support the ability for people to say, ‘well I normally got to this hospital but it’s an eight-hour wait, but over there it’s a two-and-a-half-hour wait’,” he said.
“The provision of information empowers them to make a rational decision in their circumstances at that moment.”
Cubitt said the biggest issue was the lack of flow of patients from the emergency department into other hospital wards. When patients are unable to move to a ward due to a shortage of staffed beds, emergency departments become overcrowded and ambulances could spend hours waiting outside, unable to respond to other call-outs.
“What we’re finding in Victoria is that … the length of time people are spending in an emergency department is becoming really unsafe,” she said.
Cubitt said it was becoming increasingly common for patients to be staying longer than 24 hours in the state’s emergency departments.
“We don’t think that it is safe for anyone who needs to be in a hospital to be in an emergency department for more than 12 hours,” she said.
Cubitt said the state’s hospitals were “moving into a phase of disaster-style medicine” where they were “trying to do the most for the most, rather than give the care that we would like to give”.
“That’s a really horrible place for us all to feel that we are, but that is where we are,” she said.
On Sunday night, the Royal children’s hospital issued a statement on its Facebook page saying its emergency department was experiencing a high volume of patients and encouraging people to visit their local hospital.
The Victorian Healthcare Association – the peak body for public hospitals – said hospitals had increasingly turned to social media posts as “quick and effective” way to share health information during the pandemic.
The association’s chief executive, Tom Symondson, said the pandemic was still being felt across the state’s health system despited the eased restrictions.
“Our public health and ambulance services are still managing extremely high demand for emergency care, while delivering other necessary healthcare,” Symondson said.
“Cases remain stubbornly high at around 10,000 cases a day, and around 500 people are in hospital with Covid-19. The system is also facing significant workforce shortages, with thousands of healthcare workers furloughed every day due to Covid-19.”
The Victorian government announced last week that it would spend $12bn to repair its Covid-battered health system, with $2.9bn budgeted for new health infrastructure.
