‘Throwing everything at it’
Health minister Shannon Fentiman has defended measures to free up hospital beds saying the government was “throwing everything at this” to support frontline staff.
Gold Coast Health CEO Ron Calvert wrote to healthcare workers on Tuesday warning of increased patient demand for emergency care amid an Easter holidays surge.
The letter outlined a list of strategies to maintain hospital and patient flow to mitigate overwhelming demand.
In the letter every acute ward was asked to identify and move a minimum of one patient ready for discharge to the Transfer Unit between 8am to 10am for the rest of week to free up beds.
Medics were told to postpone planned surgical and medical procedures that could be safely deferred and non-clinical and education hold.
On Wednesday, Ms Fentiman - visiting Gold Coast University Hospital - said it had seen a 10 per cent increase in presentations compared to this time last year.
“This means utilising a range of measures to try and free up beds and make sure patients flow through the hospital,” she said.
“That’s utilising things like Hospital in the Home (a service for suitable patients whose care may be stepped down after hospital admission) and Telehealth.”
Ms Fentiman said she wanted to reassure Queenslanders the duties were put on hospital was taking every measure to protect and care for the community, as well as supporting its frontline staff.
“We’re doing what we can as a government by investing in more beds and more frontline staff,” she said.
“Sometimes when you’re at peak demand you utilise all of them at the same time – so we utilise Hospital in the Home, we work to get long-stay patients who should be in aged care facilities out of the hospital more quickly.
Ms Fentiman said the state government was “throwing everything at this”.
“When you get surges in demand you need to utilise all those strategies at the same time and its so important that we let the hard-working staff know that we are busy, but we’ve got these strategies in place for them.”
Gold Coast University Hospital’s emergency department director Hayley Frieslich said the context of growing patient numbers was a global phenomenon.
“In the last quarter our category one or our highest acuity patients has increase by 57 per cent, so in terms of numbers that’s from 500 to more than 700 in that quarter,” she said.
“Discharge is important so we can get our emergency patients and high acuity patients in to allow the offloads of those ambulances.”
Ms Frieslich said she wanted to reassure the Gold Coast should they require acute care or urgent surgery “our doors are open 24/7 and you will receive the care you need”.
She added: “What we are asking and telling our community is at times like this there are longer wait times so if you feel appropriate for your circumstances consider using alternative places to receive that care.”
“There’s the urgent care centre in Coomera, the satellite clinic in Tugun and multiple other clinics are available.”