Hospital war ramped up

QUEENSLAND Health Minister Cameron Dick flew to Cairns yesterday and administered a stiff dose of medicine to hospital executives. Mr Dick has been a little slow to respond to calls for help on ramping at Cairns Hospital but to his credit swooped in yesterday to deliver a demand for action partnered with an announcement to help fix the problem. It was needed. Not surprisingly, though, the United Voice union welcomed the visit and used the platform to put hospital executives “on notice”.

There have been real concerns about people’s safety, with ambulances clogging up the hospital’s “driveway”, compromising their ability to respond to 000 emergencies.

A new $360,000 low-acuity response unit is expected to redirect non-urgent medical care to general practitioners and community organisations to help the hospital’s overflowing ED. Staff and two vehicles will be placed at Cairns as part of the initiative.

A new Patient Flow Unit tracking patients from admission to discharge also will be implemented. This will certainly highlight inefficiencies. After so much time and discussion about why our hospital is experiencing such severe ramping at times, these measures seem almost too simple a solution.

Surely a major health facility could have coordinated this months ago.

It won’t take long to discover if ramping at Cairns Hospital has become the result of poor internal communication and professional relationships or whether a Band-Aid has been whacked on a gaping wound that runs deeper to funding and staffing issues and a reluctance to address acute aged care and health pressures.