By CHARLENE MACAULAY
HOSPITAL bypass rates have dropped at Western Hospital’s emergency department, State Government figures reveal.
State Health Minister David Davis announced last week that Footscray’s Western Hospital spent 2.4 per cent of the March quarter on bypass, compared to 3.8 per cent in the December 2011 quarter.
The figure is below the state benchmark target of three per cent.
Bypass is a period of time when a hospital’s emergency department can request ambulances bypass it and take patients to other hospitals because it is filled to capacity and cannot safely accommodate and treat more patients.
Patients requiring urgent treatment are still accepted when a hospital is on bypass.
“These figures show a strong level of efficiency in the Western Hospital’s emergency department, with doctors, nurses and other staff triaging and treating patients and creating the capacity to accept more patients,” Mr Davis said.
Mr Davis said it was important Ambulance Victoria and hospitals continued to work together to improve services for patients.
Mr Davis also said government initiatives were helping to improve the timeliness of the transfer of patients into hospitals, which in turn frees up ambulances to attend other calls.
“The Department of Health has developed draft guidelines to support the transfer of low urgency ambulance patients to non-cubicle locations in hospital emergency departments, where they continue to be monitored.
“Funding has also been provided to 16 metropolitan and major rural hospitals to develop, test and implement the roles and responsibilities of extra medical staff to meet ambulance demand during periods of peak demand.”
