Bed shortages hit Australian hospitals
Patients are "dying while waiting for beds" in Australian hospitals - a situation that hasn't improved over the past 12 months, a medical college says.
The Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM) monitors a problem known as access block - the rate of ill or injured people kept waiting in an emergency room for eight hours after an inpatient bed is formally sought.
The latest annual survey conducted last month took in data from 79 hospital emergency departments across the country, and it showed no collective improvement over 12 months.
"Even though politicians and health departments have been shown the facts and even though patients are still dying while waiting for beds, there has been no significant improvement in access block since this time last year," says ACEM president Dr Sally McCarthy.
The research found the average Australian emergency department had 21.6 patients under treatment as at 10am on June 1, 2009, and a further 5.5 waiting to be seen.
Of those under treatment, 7.1 patients were waiting for an inpatient bed and caring for these people accounted for more than 30 per cent of the emergency room's workload.
In 70 per cent of cases, these patients had been waiting in the emergency department for more than eight hours.
There was one case of a patient waiting more than 45 hours, while 44 patients had been waiting more than 24 hours.
The effect of swine flu was evident in the latest snapshot, with it contributing to a six per cent increase in emergency presentations.
"(This was) possibly due to the influenza outbreak," says Associate Professor Drew Richardson, from the Australian National University who conducted the research.
"About one third of the workload in big hospitals was caring for patients who should not still be in the emergency department, they were there only because they were simply waiting for an inpatient ward bed."
Dr Richardson says 66 of the hospitals took part in both the 2008 and 2009 surveys, and results were mixed, with half reporting a small improvement and half saying the situation was worse.
"While there may be pockets of better practise, the net effect nationwide has been nil," he says.
The 2009 Access Block Point Prevalence Survey was released by the ACEM on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the federal opposition says Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's election promise to fix Australia's hospitals by mid-2009 is looking hollow following the report's release.
Opposition health spokesman Peter Dutton said Mr Rudd's election promise to "fix" hospitals by mid-2009 was looking hollow.
"The prime minister now needed to be held accountable given that he said in 2007 that he had a plan to fix the hospitals and that the buck would stop with him," Mr Dutton said in a statement.
A survey of 66 emergency departments by the college, released on Tuesday, found that overcrowding had worsened in 33 cases in 2008 and 2009.
Health Minister Nicola Roxon told an emergency medicine summit last September that governments needed to "get smarter" to reduce the number of people dying because of overcrowding in public hospital emergency wards.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/latest/5742143/bed-shortages-hit-australian-hospitals/
Patients are "dying while waiting for beds" in Australian hospitals - a situation that hasn't improved over the past 12 months, a medical college says.
The Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM) monitors a problem known as access block - the rate of ill or injured people kept waiting in an emergency room for eight hours after an inpatient bed is formally sought.
The latest annual survey conducted last month took in data from 79 hospital emergency departments across the country, and it showed no collective improvement over 12 months.
"Even though politicians and health departments have been shown the facts and even though patients are still dying while waiting for beds, there has been no significant improvement in access block since this time last year," says ACEM president Dr Sally McCarthy.
The research found the average Australian emergency department had 21.6 patients under treatment as at 10am on June 1, 2009, and a further 5.5 waiting to be seen.
Of those under treatment, 7.1 patients were waiting for an inpatient bed and caring for these people accounted for more than 30 per cent of the emergency room's workload.
In 70 per cent of cases, these patients had been waiting in the emergency department for more than eight hours.
There was one case of a patient waiting more than 45 hours, while 44 patients had been waiting more than 24 hours.
The effect of swine flu was evident in the latest snapshot, with it contributing to a six per cent increase in emergency presentations.
"(This was) possibly due to the influenza outbreak," says Associate Professor Drew Richardson, from the Australian National University who conducted the research.
"About one third of the workload in big hospitals was caring for patients who should not still be in the emergency department, they were there only because they were simply waiting for an inpatient ward bed."
Dr Richardson says 66 of the hospitals took part in both the 2008 and 2009 surveys, and results were mixed, with half reporting a small improvement and half saying the situation was worse.
"While there may be pockets of better practise, the net effect nationwide has been nil," he says.
The 2009 Access Block Point Prevalence Survey was released by the ACEM on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the federal opposition says Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's election promise to fix Australia's hospitals by mid-2009 is looking hollow following the report's release.
Opposition health spokesman Peter Dutton said Mr Rudd's election promise to "fix" hospitals by mid-2009 was looking hollow.
"The prime minister now needed to be held accountable given that he said in 2007 that he had a plan to fix the hospitals and that the buck would stop with him," Mr Dutton said in a statement.
A survey of 66 emergency departments by the college, released on Tuesday, found that overcrowding had worsened in 33 cases in 2008 and 2009.
Health Minister Nicola Roxon told an emergency medicine summit last September that governments needed to "get smarter" to reduce the number of people dying because of overcrowding in public hospital emergency wards.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/latest/5742143/bed-shortages-hit-australian-hospitals/