A COORDINATED Pandemic Code Brown emergency has been called for all public metropolitan and some major regional hospitals.

The Code Brown status puts in place a formal emergency management structure to make the best use of hospital resources as Victoria battles the global Omicron outbreak.

Like many around the world, Victoria’s health system is juggling workforce shortages because of staff in isolation, a vast number of coronavirus patients requiring hospitalisation and ongoing treatment for patients with urgent and emergency needs.

With health services asking for further assistance to manage the emergency situation, the Department of Health is calling affected public hospitals to activate their Code Brown plans by midday yesterday.

A 'Code Brown' means hospitals can call staff back from leave and defer non-essential care.

Other actions that can be taken include reconfiguring services to free up more staff, including the delivery of outpatient services outside the hospital and the rapid offload of ambulance patients at emergency departments to get paramedics back on the road as soon as possible.

Hospitals may also choose to redeploy staff to work in areas of highest clinical priority.

In addition to hospitals in Metropolitan Melbourne, Code Brown will be implemented at Barwon Health, Grampians Health, Bendigo Health, Goulburn Valley Health, Albury Wodonga Health and Latrobe Regional Hospital.

Shadow health minister, Georgie Crozier said the declaration indicated just how dire Victoria’s health crisis is and the Code Brown declaration was due to years of neglect and mismanagement from the government.

“It is important that our health services are adequately staffed and resourced to deal with the Omicron surge – however today’s Code Brown declaration sadly demonstrates that the Andrews Labor Government has failed to ensure that our health system is prepared,” she said.

“Having had two years to prepare Victoria’s health services, the Andrews Labor Government has failed Victorians – leaving many at risk.

“In March 2020, Daniel Andrews labelled our health system “world class” and it was “well-prepared” to deal with an outbreak.

“The Government told Victorians at the time that they were putting in measures that would support our health system to manage COVID19.

“A surge capacity of staff and 4000 ICU beds were promised, however, neither were delivered.

“For two years Victorians have had the harshest of lockdowns to prepare our health system to be able to cope with demands from COVID cases, however, as we enter our third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is evident that the Andrews Government has failed to manage even the most basic elements of the pandemic response.

“Ambulances are now ramping regularly, dental and elective surgery wait lists are blowing out, IVF services are being suspended for months placing untold emotional burden on families and the health conditions of sick Victorians are deteriorating further, putting the lives of Victorians at risk.”

Acting health minister, James Merlino said “our hardworking health workers on the front-line are caring for record numbers of coronavirus patients every day – this is the best way to ensure our hospitals can continue to safely care for those that need it most”.

“Our health services will have to make some hard decisions over the next few weeks to manage increasing demand and I thank every single one of them for making the tough calls necessary to help as many Victorians as they can,” he said.

Western District Health Service chief executive, Rohan Fitzgerald said WDHS has not activated its Code Brown response, however, as the COVID-19 environment changes, this is an option that may be considered.

The Department of Health will also establish a new Health Service Response Centre which will help hospitals coordinate patient flow, distribute activity and support decisions around service reconfiguration – such as suspending some activity or moving to home-based care.

The Pandemic Code Brown is expected to last four to six weeks and health officials will monitor the situation to determine when it’s safe to begin winding down arrangements.