By XAVIER SMERDON
WERRIBEE Mercy Hospital is struggling to keep up with Wyndham’s population boom, according to documents obtained by Star.
The documents collate the number of times patients have walked out of the hospital due to excessive waits for treatment and the number of times the hospital requested to be bypassed by ambulances when they can no longer take any non-urgent patients.
Executive Director of Mercy Health South Western Health Services, Richard Ainley, disputed the accuracy of the documents.
According to the paperwork, on six separate days last month, more than 25 per cent of patients walked out without being seen with 40 out of 113 (35.39 per cent) patients walking out on Sunday 4 September.
The records show the hospital was on bypass for a total of 72 hours in the first 12 days of September this year.
In August they were on bypass for 153.4 hours, the equivalent of 6.39 days in the month.
“Figures reported in the document are incorrect and are not part of any official report, so we are unsure as to its origin,” Mr Ainley said.
“Mercy Health regularly reports this information to the Department of Health and it is publicly available in the quarterly public hospitals performance report.”
But the hospital was unable to provide statistics to disprove the ones given to Star.
Mr Ainley said the hospital’s high bypass rate was due to the lack of an Intensive Care Unit.
“Werribee Mercy Hospital is a community hospital and does not have an Intensive Care Unit on site which means it generally has a higher bypass rate than other larger hospitals. For this reason we must rely on transferring very sick patients to larger facilities,” he said.
Acting Shadow Health Minister Danielle Green said funding cuts had left Wyndham’s only hospital in a dire situation.
“This is what happens when the Minister’s first priority is to slash millions of dollars from Victoria’s health budget,” Ms Green said.
“The fact is overstretched medical workforce trying to do more with less can potentially put patients’ safety at risk.
“It’s clear this Government doesn’t care about patients in Melbourne’s northern and western suburbs.”
Health Minister David Davis did not respond to Star’s request for comment.
