Some patients at Logan and Redland Hospitals are waiting up to three days in emergency departments before being put in a bed, the peak body for emergency medicine in Australia claims.
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Australasian College for Emergency Medicine President Simon Judkins visited the emergency departments of the two south-east Queensland hospitals on Wednesday.
Dr Judkins said he was told of patients waiting up to 72 hours for a bed in extreme cases, with others waiting at least 24 hours.
“If you think about the type of patients we’re dealing with, especially mental health patients, we’re taking them and putting them into a hallway and sit them in a chair for three days … it’s an inhumane situation and I don’t think we should tolerate that,” he said.
“It seems to have become acceptable for a patient to spend a day in the emergency department.”
While the cases cited are on the top end of the scale, recent Queensland Health figures found 40 per cent of patients at Logan Hospital have to wait more than 30 minutes before receiving emergency treatment.
Redland Hospital meanwhile saw 37 per cent of patients forced to wait more than half an hour for a bed.
The college’s Queensland faculty chair Kim Hansen said there was no one solution for the problem, but a range of measures which would help to bring waiting times down.
“There is no doubt that we need more inpatient beds, we need more ward beds for sick and injured Queenslanders,” Dr Hansen said.
“I think the doctor’s focus is very much on the processes, about getting that flow of patients right, getting them through the emergency department and then (into the hospital).“
Metro South Health, which manages both hospitals, held an Emergency Patient Health Forum recently to look at ways to manage processes between hospitals in the health district, which also involved input from Queensland Ambulance.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said there had been a spike in presentations to emergency departments recently which hospital staff were dealing with.
“We’ve got extra money going in there, unfortunately there has been an increase in the number of people presenting there and they’re working to alleviate that,” the Premier said.
“We’re putting more money into expanding our hospitals to ensure we have the doctors and nurses that are needed. But of course, we are owed $300 million by the federal government.”
Ms Palaszczuk was referring to the funding shortfall claimed by her government from previous funding freezes by the federal government.
The Commonwealth has denied withholding money from Queensland hospitals, and federal Coalition MP for Bowman Andrew Laming on Wednesday again rejected those claims.
“There is an infrastructure challenge here. (The federal goernment) can put all the money into here because of the activity, but state Labor moves the infrastructure money to seats where a Labor MP wants it,” Mr Laming said.
Logan Hospital is currently undergoing a 192-bed expansion, while temporary medical wards will progress over the next 6 months to provide additional capacity.
Redland Hospital’s emergency department is getting a four-bed, $566,000 upgrade, while it will also get a new ICU as part of the Redland Hospital Infrastructure Master Plan.
