Perth's hospitals in crisis: AMA

[Chuck]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/08/04/2645365.htm

Perth's hospitals in crisis: AMA

Posted 3 hours 14 minutes ago
Updated 2 hours 58 minutes ago

The AMA says Perth's hospitals are failing to cope, with some patients being forced to wait more than 12 hours.

The AMA says about 50 patients were forced to wait for a bed at Royal Perth Hospital. (ABC: Graeme Powell, file photo)

The Australian Medical Association (AMA) says Perth's hospitals are at crisis point and are failing to cope with an influx of patients during the flu season.

It says ambulances were queuing up yesterday and last night to admit patients, who are waiting more than 12 hours to be admitted.

The AMA's vice president, Dave Mountain, says at last report 40 patients were waiting for beds at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital and another 50 at Royal Perth.

Sir Charles Gairdiner has also been forced to cancel 13 elective surgery procedures this week because of the increase in the number of patients with respiratory problems.

There has also been a big increase in the number of children attending the emergency department at Princess Margaret Hospital.

Dr Mountain says the Government must deliver on a promise to fix the problem.

"We need the rhetoric from the last election campaign, that they understood that we needed capacity and beds and nurses in our system, to actually be delivered rather than implement 3 per cent efficiency cuts," he said.

 

[Science Teacher]

Re: Perth's hospitals in crisis: AMA

From Perth Now http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,25881082-2761,00.html Aug. 4th


MORE than 250 children were rushed to Princess Margaret Hospital in the past 24 hours causing chaos in the emergency department.

Australian Medical Association of WA state president Gary Geelhoed said WA hospitals were operating over capacity and until extra beds were put into the system patients, including children, would have to wait dangerously long to get care.

?For more than a week our hospitals have been under siege and the situation is growing more serious by the day,? AMA state president Prof Gary Geelhoed.

?Hospitals are trying to operate over capacity and until they get the extra beds and resources they need, patients will have dangerously long waiting times causing unnecessary suffering.?

Prof Geelhoed said the situation had reached crisis point in the past 24 hours resulting in:

MORE than 250 children attending the emergency department at Princess Margaret Hospital, many with flu symptoms. Most children had to wait up to 90 minutes to see a doctor.

AT 9am this morning, 110 patients were still queuing in emergency departments at Perth?s three major hospitals. Many had waited up to six hours to be seen by a doctor and a number had to wait more than 24 hours for a hospital bed.

"Over the last week the hospital system has been struggling to cope,? Prof Geelhoed said.

?We have seen serious levels of ramping, with more than half the ambulance fleet tied up outside emergency departments.

?Most elective surgery has been cancelled because of the bed shortage and there?s even been a lack of intensive care beds with hospitals having great difficulty admitting new intubated patients.?

 

[Hogweed]

Re: Perth's hospitals in crisis: AMA

"MORE than 250 children were rushed to Princess Margaret Hospital in the past 24 hours causing chaos in the emergency department."

:-(

 

[JimO]

Re: Perth's hospitals in crisis: AMA

"MORE than 250 children were rushed to Princess Margaret Hospital in the past 24 hours causing chaos in the emergency department."

:-(

Even if the number of deaths don't reflect it, this is no seasonal influenza.

 

[Jeremy]

Re: Perth's hospitals in crisis: AMA

Even if the number of deaths don't reflect it, this is no seasonal influenza.

Agreed.

 

[Jeremy]

Re: Perth's hospitals in crisis: AMA

there?s even been a lack of intensive care beds with hospitals having great difficulty admitting new intubated patients.?

Never a good sign.

 

[wotan]

Re: Perth's hospitals in crisis: AMA

That's one of the things I have been wanting to watch but never knew where to start with it.

Presumably, a patient on a vent is in the ICU. The number of vents is probably less than the number of ICU beds, and there will be people in the ICU for reasons other than flu.. One, or both, of those resources may run out, and then what happens? I would think there are not enough RT's in the world to bag the overflow.

And what happens when RT's start getting sick in large numbers?

 

[JimO]

Re: Perth's hospitals in crisis: AMA

That's one of the things I have been wanting to watch but never knew where to start with it.

Presumably, a patient on a vent is in the ICU. The number of vents is probably less than the number of ICU beds, and there will be people in the ICU for reasons other than flu.. One, or both, of those resources may run out, and then what happens? I would think there are not enough RT's in the world to bag the overflow.

And what happens when RT's start getting sick in large numbers?

We have a good friend who is an RN specializing patients on vents. It's simple. Triage procedures will take over and people that are surviving now will die. That will be one cause for an increase in deaths. Also, they didn't have ventilators, antivirals, antibiotics, flu vaccines, or cardiac bypass machines in 1918. We could be much closer to 1918 than we realize considering the resources we have. When those resources reach maximum capacity, I believe deaths will go up significantly.

 

[Jeremy]

Re: Perth's hospitals in crisis: AMA

We have a good friend who is an RN specializing patients on vents. It's simple. Triage procedures will take over and people that are surviving now will die. That will be one cause for an increase in deaths. Also, they didn't have ventilators, antivirals, antibiotics, flu vaccines, or cardiac bypass machines in 1918. We could be much closer to 1918 than we realize considering the resources we have. When those resources reach maximum capacity, I believe deaths will go up significantly.

Agreed. If we get on par with 1918, in terms of resources, I doubt this virus will be considered so non-lethal.

 

[wotan]

Re: Perth's hospitals in crisis: AMA

We have a good friend who is an RN specializing patients on vents. It's simple. Triage procedures will take over and people that are surviving now will die. That will be one cause for an increase in deaths. Also, they didn't have ventilators, antivirals, antibiotics, flu vaccines, or cardiac bypass machines in 1918. We could be much closer to 1918 than we realize considering the resources we have. When those resources reach maximum capacity, I believe deaths will go up significantly.

That is exactly what I have been thinking/saying for some time.

And this is still the first wave in the Southern Hemisphere.

 

[Hogweed]

Re: Perth's hospitals in crisis: AMA

The BBC will show a drama-documentary on the 1918 flu tomorrow. The show was planned before the current outbreak.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/a...panish-flu-epidemic-vital-history-lesson.html

The 1918 virus struck with amazing speed, often killing its victims within hours of the first signs of infection. The strain overwhelmed the body's natural defences and the virus caused an uncontrollable haemorrhaging that filled the lungs. Patients literally drowned in their own body fluids.

Set against the background of the Armistice in November 1918, Spanish flu - so called because Spain, not being party to the war, saw no need to censor news of the spreading depredation - had already hit the country in a first wave earlier in the spring.

Then, like now, doctors thought those who contracted the illness would then be immune to any further bouts. They were wrong.

Britain's Chief Medical Officer Sir Arthur Newsholme ordered that Britons should carry on, advising them simply to avoid sneezing and coughing in public, to keep plenty of fresh handkerchiefs to hand, wash hands regularly and gargle with a disinfectant mouthwash.

Apart from the mouthwash, our health chiefs have repeated his advice to the letter.

But Dr Niven, the medical officer of health for Manchester, recognised the very real threat and not only produced handbills but also posted warnings throughout the city urging people to avoid trams, and unventilated assembly halls.

He also persuaded mill owners and schools to close down

===
More at link

Link to BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lz31y

Drama illuminating one doctor's pioneering efforts to protect the people of Manchester from the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic.

Set against the background of the Armistice in November 1918 as millions of exhausted soldiers return home from the Great War, the film tells the little-known story of Dr James Niven, Manchester's medical health officer for thirty years, and his heroic efforts to combat a second wave of fatal influenza as it spreads across the city and the UK.

 

[kiwibird]

Re: Perth's hospitals in crisis: AMA

Hospitals in flu meltdown - AMA

August 04, 2009
Article from: Australian Associated Press

A MELTDOWN in West Australian hospitals during peak flu season could have given the federal government an excuse to take them over, says the state branch of the Australian Medical Association.

AMA WA president Gary Geelhoed said WA hospitals had been under siege for the past week, with patients suffering unnecessarily through long waiting times.

Most of the state's elective surgery arrangements have been cancelled because of a bed shortage and ambulances have been forced to wait outside hospitals because there are no beds to take patients to, Prof Geelhoed said.

"For more than a week, our hospitals have been under siege and the situation is growing more serious by the day,'' he said.

Some patients had waited six hours to be seen by a doctor in the emergency department last night and some had to wait 24 hours for a hospital bed.

Prof Geelhoed said the state had no capacity to deal with increased patient numbers during the flu season.

While the ideal situation was to have 85 per cent occupancy rates in hospitals, WA was working at close to 100 per cent capacity, he said.

"We just don't have capacity in reserve,'' Prof Geelhoed said.

"We just cannot do the work, we can't deal with the sick, we can't deal with the injured, we can't deal with fluctuations due to swine flu. The hospitals go into meltdown.''

The fundamental problem was a lack of hospital beds across the nation, which have been reduced by 60 per cent in the past 25 years, Prof Geelhoed said.

Cost shifting and buck passing because of the different funding models - some state and some commonwealth - were a problem, he said.

"The danger is that unless our hospitals can perform better, the Federal Government could have the excuse to take them over and that would be a disaster in our view,'' Prof Geelhoed said.

While the Federal Government had identified the problems in the health system, it had failed to fix the problems, Prof Geelhoed said.

"Certainly it's highlighting the problems that Nicola Roxon and Kevin Rudd have talked about when they were first elected and certainly the problem hasn't been solved,'' he said.

"The problems we have are right around Australia.

"Nothing that they have proposed so far ... would solve the problems.''

Funding administered by the state government or smaller local authorities would avoid cost shifting between in and out-patient programs and create more efficiency in the system, Prof Geelhoed said.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25882043-12377,00.html