Ambulances, hospital beds in short supply, Darwin

[annielaurie]

Ambulances, hospital beds in short supply in Darwin, says paramedic

24 Oct/2009

Mr Leigh says it is becoming more common for ambulances to be stuck at Royal Darwin Hospital, waiting to offload a patient.
An intensive care paramedic says Darwin needs more ambulances and hospital beds.

Jim Leigh has been recognised for 20 years of service working for St John Ambulance in the Northern Territory.

He says over the time he has worked in the Territory the shortage of ambulances has become a regular "bugbear" and over the years people needing assistance are waiting longer for an ambulance.

He says only four ambulances cover the Darwin and Palmerston area, which extends to Jabiru.

"There's been times when people would have to wait to get an ambulance just due to it being a busy period, and in the past 20 years I have seen those become more prevalent," he said.

"When I first started you might get the occasional time where people may have waited two or three hours to get an ambulance but now you'd see that much more often."

And Mr Leigh says ambulance officers are still been held up at Royal Darwin Hospital with patients that are treated inside the ambulance, because no beds are available in accident and emergency area.

"We are stuck with holding a patient until they can find a bed," he said.

"There has been occasions in the past and it still happens to some degree now that a crew might be stuck up at the hospital waiting to clear because they haven't been able to hand the patient over to the hospital."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009 ... ion=justin

More on shortages at aussie hospitals, discussion here ...

[Jovial Monk]

Serious money was taken out of the public sector, and the share of revenues between state & federal shifted too far to the feds under the Howard/Costello govt. Serious investment is needed.

[Doyle]

Serious money was taken out of the public sector, and the share of revenues between state & federal shifted too far to the feds under the Howard/Costello govt. Serious investment is needed.

Indeed it is. The Commonwealth Government has been throwing money at the states through things like National Partnerships, Health and Hospitals Fund and the National Healthcare Agreements. The trouble is for all the money the Feds give the states there are issues for the states over recurrent funding. Giving states the money to build new facilities is one thing but in a lot of cases states don't have the money to staff them or the staff to run them.

Have a look around at some of the facilities that have been built with Federal money but are running well below capacity or are sitting idle because of workforce issues.

The blame game is a dangerous one. Neither the Federal or state governments wants to play it because of voter backlash, but it's a dangerous game that both Federal and state governments want to play because of voter backlash.

[Lefteee]

Maybe the federal government should take full responability for health and education.

[donniedarko]

The federal government has zero idea on how to operationally run a publicly funded health system.

If you look at the performance indicators that the Dept of Health and Ageing uses to measure the performance of public hospitals, you can see they are weak, often non-comparable, and often disappear into large weighty volumes like the 'Report on Government Services' manual (some 1500 pages or more).

What is needed in the states is a stronger inquisitorial system for examining the performance of state governments in health (beyond the scare-mongering of paper media). Only on one event per year in Qld (estimates committee) does the state govt have any motivation to not lie in response to scrutiny by the opposition party, and this event is poorly mediated - the debate is minimal and devolves to petty finger-pointing.

Federal govt takeover does have merit, albeit lessened since labor won federally and the state-federal blaming seems to have lessened, but a more pressing need is for regular and intelligent scrutiny of health performance, with a calm/measured response to areas of low performance.

[Lefteee]

The federal government has zero idea on how to operationally run a publicly funded health system.

By this you mean they've never done it? True (although they apparently manage in the ACT) but when it comes to funding, federal government has some advantages that state governments simply do not posess.

Though the distribution of Australia's voters (most people live in major metropolitan areas) might give cause for concern at the possibility of neglect, since letting everybody in regional Australia would only directly affect a relatively small number of the overall voting population.

[donniedarko]

The federal government has zero idea on how to operationally run a publicly funded health system.

By this you mean they've never done it? True (although they apparently manage in the ACT) but when it comes to funding, federal government has some advantages that state governments simply do not posess.

I mean that the involvement of federal govt (through the Department of Health and Ageing) is at a funding and policy role. They do not know how keep a group of large tertiary hospitals running at budget without drop in quality of patient care (and no, I'm not saying that state govts are good at doing that either!!!)

[Lefteee]

Yet they mangage to successfully administer other large bureaucracies right across the nation.

Not saying you are wrong, just pointing that out.