By Aidan Windle
ONE in three emergency patients waited more than 12 hours before being admitted to the Western Hospital in Footscray during the first half of 2005.
The State Government’s Your Hospitals report has revealed the figure of 34 per cent is the highest rate of long waits for any Victorian emergency department, and double the rate recorded for the previous six months.
Health Services Union state secretary Jeff Jackson said Western Suburbs patients were suffering as a “health crisis” hits Victoria.
“It is absolutely outrageous that the Bracks Government is allowing so many sick or injured patents to wait more than half a day for a hospital bed,” Mr Jackson said.
“This means seriously ill patients are being placed at risk because they are not treated soon enough.”
But Health Minister Bronwyn Pike played down concern, pointing to the Western Hospital’s achievement in immediately treating 100 per cent of the most urgent emergency patients from January to June 2005, at the same time as admissions were rising.
Professor AnneMaree Kelly, director of the Western Hospital Emergency Department, said she was “affronted” at the suggestion that stretched resources were compromising patient care.
“They could not get better care if they tried,” she said.
She said patients waiting for one of the 26 emergency department beds at the Western Hospital are taken inside the treatment area and given roundtheclock attention by a dedicated team of doctors and nurses.
Rejecting talk of a crisis, Professor Kelly described the increase in long waits for emergency patients as a “blip”.
“It was a busy winter,” she said. “There was a lot of disease around.”
The report stated that numbers of emergency patients waiting 12hours or more to be admitted were virtually unchanged from last year overall across Victorian hospitals.
Regional centres like the Swan Hill District Hospital during the first half of 2005 admitted every emergency patient within 12 hours.
Sunshine admitted 84 per cent during the same period, while the Mercy Werribee Hospital admitted 94 per cent.
Williamstown Hospital figures were unavailable.
Western Health, which operates the Western, Williamstown and Sunshine hospitals, won a $3.3 million boost for the 200506 financial year to treat more emergency patients.
A shortstay unit planned to open at the Western Hospital early in 2006 will ease competition for emergency beds.
