Doctors have been placed under repeated pressure to speed up patient discharges as occupancy rates at Canberra Hospital hit 100 per cent on at least seven days a month ago.
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The Australian Medical Association has criticised the results – which saw one day hit a 105 per cent occupancy – as a reflection of a health system stretched too thin, despite the known busy winter and skiing period.
AMA ACT president Professor Steve Robson said the repeated texts by hospital managers to doctors calling them to "expedite discharges as a matter of urgency", describing up to 20 patients from the emergency department waiting for beds, as both alarming and predictable.
"It happens all the time," he said.
"It's a big issue, and it's an illustration of the fact that the infrastructure is so far behind."
Professor Robson, an obstetrician who works at the campus' maternity ward, said the demands made it more likely patients on the "borderline" of being ready to go home would be sent home.
"When you have this kind of extraordinary pressure coming from the high administration it is very difficult for junior doctors to go against that," he said.
ACT Health declined to provide a daily or weekly breakdown of occupancy rates for this year, instead providing a four-month average from June 1 of 93.2 per cent. This was up from 92.8 per cent in the equivalent period last year, and 92.1 in 2014.
The Labor government has had mean public hospital occupancy targets of 90 per cent for each year since 2013-14, but Canberra Hospital is not on track to meet that in 2016, with 91.3 per cent of beds filled across the first nine months.
The ACT nurses' union secretary Jenny Miragaya said the texts, which she first saw on Friday, aligned closely with a number of critical incident reports sent to her by members, and reports for 11 days in September suggested wards had exceeded funded bed numbers or had insufficient staff to service existing beds.
"My members are getting texts continually asking them to do extra shifts and overtime," she said. "If they are running at 100-105 per cent occupancy that would probably explain why."
Ms Miragaya said ACT Health had attributed extra calls on staff to increased winter sick leave, but the ultimate result was an exhausted nursing workforce. No major party has yet committed to her call for mandated staffing levels.
An ACT Health spokeswoman said there were no instances this year where patients were unable to be transferred from the emergency department to an inpatient ward following a bed request, although there was no reference to how long the wait for such a move was.
"Where the hospital occupancy rate is recorded as being over 100 per cent, this reflects that additional beds have been opened temporarily to allow admissions through the ED," she said.
Liberals leader Jeremy Hanson said the occupancy levels reflected the "sad state of health" under ACT Labor and the Greens.
"Canberra Hospital is struggling with capacity, staff are run off their feet and being put in unfair situations, all because Andrew Barr and Shane Rattenbury thought it would be better to spend money on trams," he said.
An ACT Labor spokesman did not address the specific occupancy figures, saying instead that the territory's population was growing by 5000 people a year and the party was planning for the future by expanding services to keep up with the demand.
"We've got a 10-year plan for health that includes more wards, more nurses, more operating theatres, more bulk-billing GPs, expanded emergency departments and new hospitals," he said.
"We'll keep the walk-in centres open and we'll add more."
