REMEMBER WHEN

GOLD COAST BULLETIN Thursday August 2, 2007

A REPORT on the state of the nation’s emergency departments exposed the critically overloaded Gold Coast Hospital.

Dr Ian Knox, who contributed to the survey by the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine, said he had been contacted by senior staff at the hospital who were disgusted by a lack of beds and an inability to see patients.

“The hospitals are in crisis, including the Gold Coast, and most certainly also in Brisbane at the PA (Princess Alexandra) and Royal Brisbane,’’ he said.

“At the Gold Coast Hospital last week, there were 30 to 40 people per day who were just getting up and leaving without ever being seen.

“The cynics would probably say those people are well enough that they don’t need to be in an emergency department, but we could be seeing most of these people anyway.

“We can look at them and tell them what to do and take them out the back door rather than seeing them turn around and go out the front door.”

The Bulletin received a letter from a senior staff member the previous week complaining about the same issues uncovered in the study.

The report says emergency departments in Queensland and South Australia were by far the worst in Australia, with the largest backlog of emergency patients who are not seen for more than eight hours.

Seventy hospitals nationwide were surveyed for the report which took a snapshot of their activities on June 18, 2007.

The report compared conditions to similar data collected in 2004.