Hospital bed blocks, ambulance ramping: Here’s six suggestions to fix them

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At least a dozen Victorians have died waiting for ambulances and senior doctors and nurses say overcrowding in Victoria’s emergency departments is the worst it has been in years.

This week, six health experts, from a former chief medical officer to an emergency doctor, shared their view of what governments can do to fix the struggling healthcare system.Former secretary of the department of health Professor Stephen Duckett says Victoria is experiencing what he calls a “care deficit”. Problems like ambulance ramping and overcrowded EDs predate COVID-19, but people who delayed care during the pandemic has meant a flood of very sick patients in the emergency departments.

“It seems to me there is no reason why Victoria isn’t self-sufficient in terms of all aspects of the health workforce,” he says. Hospitals, aged care, disability care and multidisciplinary services, including those for people with chronic disease, would all be part of it. The federal government needed to raise its contribution to hospitals from 45 to 50 per cent of total funding and abolish a 6.5 per cent growth cap on hospital funding, which would feed in an extra $20 billion over four years.

“Such a lack of transparency is often justified on grounds of patient or client privacy,” Mathews says. “But such an attitude can prevent important research.” On the issue of bed blocking, Ozanne-Smith says there is a clear problem of chronic under-funding of hospitals and underpayment of some healthcare workers over many years, which has resulted in inefficiency and staffing shortages.

Terry Slevin, chief executive for the Public Health Association of Australia, wants to see an Australian Centre for Disease Control set up.

 

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That's what happens when Jeff Kennett closed so many hospitals he shut down over 1000 beds, including the infectious disease hospital in Fairfield...

Labor’s emergency clinics will fix all our problems fkg idiots where how are they going to staff them

It's OK dan said the hospitals didn't need more beds

One person to blame for all of this. The former health minister - the current Premier of Victoria.

Did it ever cross your mind to ask Nurses and Paramedics? EDs have been running the same way since I started & need to evolve as much as bed block causes. Community care is more than GP incentives. anmfvic VicAmboUnion ACParamedicine acnp_national ParamedicPract

And yet despite the crises, the unions are still silent. No graffitied ambulances or protests or anything like that. Things that make you go 🤔

Instead of apartments build more hospitals, not roads and pay nurses more.

One “expert” saying ED’s are overran because aged care & disability residents are taking up beds. Well, increase the beds. Don’t kick out aged care residents.

Why are non urgent cases crowding hospital emergency?

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