East Gippsland’s health system was at breaking point last Friday night.
In a worrying trend, Bairnsdale hospital’s emergency department was at capacity with numerous ambulances ramped and unable to respond to jobs, meanwhile Latrobe Valley ambulances were attending Code 1 jobs in East Gippsland as they were the closest available ambulances, and the Mallacoota ambulance was sent to a case in Orbost as it was the closest vehicle.
Currently during the night period there is one night shift crew based in Lakes Entrance and Bairnsdale, with on-call ambulances at Paynesville and Orbost. There is also no intensive care paramedic (MICA) between 8pm and 8am across East Gippsland, which limits the treatment and resources for complex jobs such as cardiac arrests or dealing with severely ill children.
Last Friday night the Lakes Entrance night shift was ramped for five hours, Paynesville for three hours and Orbost seven hours, leaving that region uncovered in case of emergency.
One Code 1 emergency case waited more than three hours for an ambulance to attend, while another one waited two hours.
Bairnsdale Regional Health Service chief executive officer, Robyn Hayles, said BRHS is working with the Department of Health on ways it can overcome some of the space challenges it has inside its Emergency Department given rising demand and East Gippsland’s increasing population.
“As has happened previously, we had a high demand in the Emergency Department when ambulances began arriving, a large number of patients in our waiting room and all inpatient beds in our hospital occupied,” Bairnsdale Regional Health Service chief executive officer, Robyn Hayles, said.
“We also had some members of our staff on sick leave.
“The arrival of additional patients via ambulances within short spaces of time exacerbated the existing backlog of patients requiring our care during these periods at the weekend.
“All of these factors occurring at once makes it difficult for us to admit patients and release ambulances.
“Our Emergency Department also has limited space – nine assessment cubicles, two assessment rooms and five short stay beds, while demand for our ED care has risen by 10 per cent each year for the past three years.
“Again, we thank our Ambulance Victoria colleagues and our own team at BRHS for their hard work and devotion to patient care in such circumstances,” she said.
“We will continue to work with Ambulance Victoria and our partner agencies across Gippsland to deliver the best possible service for our patients.”
Local MP Tim Bull has held recent discussions with both BRHS management and the Victorian Ambulance Union about the issues they face.
“The state-wide health crisis we are seeing comes back primarily to two major issues,” he said.
“Firstly, our health sector, including local hospitals like Bairnsdale, has been put under enormous funding pressure by being asked to cut their budgets.
“Recent incidents at Bairnsdale have seen both the emergency department full and the hospital full, so patients could not be moved out of the emergency ward and therefore ambulances are ramped as there is no-where to move the patents to. Part of the problem is staffing challenges at our hospitals, both in the emergency departments and the hospitals generally as they must adhere to nurse patient ratios.
“Our medical staff and paramedics are doing an incredible job under great pressure, they really are – but the answer to this is not asking our hospitals to work on lesser budgets, which is what has happened. They’ve all been asked to reduce costs.
“Last week in Parliament I met with the ambulance union in person and the clear message was they have enough paramedics, they just want dispatch improvements in several areas including better rostering, better policing of call-outs to avoid non-urgent matters, overtime relief and above all, a concerted effort to reduce ramping so they can keep their ambulances on the road and not have them sitting at emergency departments.”
Mr Bull said in most cases it is the hospital issues and the ramping that is impacting ambulance availability.
“We even heard from the union of cases where paramedics were working on patients in some emergency departments due to the staff shortages in hospital ED’s,” he said.
“I spoke about this at length in Parliament last sitting week and pleaded with the Minister to both restore hospital budgets and better resource of emergency departments,” he said.
