WITH the recent release of health performance data covering Victorian hospital Emergency Department (ED) delays, the Hamilton Base Hospital has been listed as one of the state’s top medical services.
After one of the busiest quarters (April to June) in Victoria’s history, more than 486,000 presentations to state-wide EDs were recorded and a disturbingly high proportion of cases were not treated within the recommended timeframe, with some hospitals only being able to meet the standard for about one out of three patients.
With an average across the state of 58.97 per cent of patients seen on time, Hamilton scored 81.74 per cent to be fifth on the list and only had one other regional hospital (Swan Hill) record a better result.
WDHS chief executive, Rohan Fitzgerald, said the pressure on nurses and doctors in EDs across the state was unprecedented, and locally this was exacerbated by the ‘third-world’ infrastructure in the Hamilton Base Hospital’s ED.
“This result reflects the hard work and dedication of our medical and nursing teams, who despite the challenges they face daily due to the poor working conditions in ED, are still managing to treat the majority of patients within the recommended timeframes,” he said.
“Whilst the data shows that our hospital is meeting its recommendations and currently performing better than many others, it’s tough seeing the extra strain the unsatisfactory conditions in ED are placing on staff, who are exhausted.
“As one of our nurses reflected recently, the building isn’t fit for an office space, let alone an Emergency Department treating over 9000 critically ill patients a year.
“Just because we live in a country area, our staff and patients shouldn’t have to operate in a sub-standard environment.
“It was a real blow earlier this year, to again miss out on Budget funding for our ED/ICU redevelopment, after 12 years of lobbying for this project.
“Year on year our ED is getting busier and we’ve seen an 11 per cent increase in presentations in the last 12 months. We need the State Government to get behind this $32 million ED/ICU redevelopment to support our medical professionals to deliver the standard of care that is expected of them, and that our patients so desperately deserve.”
The recommended treatment time after presentation to ED is different for a range of five triage categories, from those requiring resuscitation to non-urgent cases.
During the quarter, 1844 Victorian patients had to wait for more than 24 hours, a more-than-400 per cent increase on the same quarter in 2021, underlining the current health system crisis.
The ambulance service also experienced increased pressure, being called to 97,928 code one cases, the busiest quarter in Ambulance Victoria’s history.
In 12 months, there has been a 16 per cent increase in “lights and sirens” cases across Victoria and 4694 more than the previous quarter.
In May, the Australian Medical Association reported that Victoria has a target of 90 per cent of cases being transferred from the ambulance to ED within 40 minutes, but in 2020-21 only 72.7 per cent of patients met that benchmark, a 5.2 per cent deterioration in performance from the previous year (77.9 per cent) and a 10.3 per cent decrease from 2017-18 (83.0 per cent).
Earlier this week, The Nationals leader, Peter Walsh, said if elected, they would shelve the $35 billion Suburban Rail Loop project in Melbourne and put $8 billion into regional hospitals instead.
Opposition leader, Matthew Guy said, “there’s no use having a train seat when you can’t get a hospital bed”.
“Building a railway tunnel from Cheltenham to Box Hill doesn’t save anyone’s life,” he said.
“Building or upgrading 20 hospitals around the state does.”
Suburban Rail Loop and Transport Infrastructure minister, Jacinta Allan, hit back and said it was “a desperate act” and the proposal would cut 24,000 jobs.
