24 July 2007

Katy Gallagher afraid to admit we may have problems with our Hospitals

| Jonathon Reynolds
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The ABC is reporting here that the Federal Government is considering a Nationwide Leagues table to rate the quality and safety of Hospitals.

The Minister (never responsible for anything), Katy Gallagher, appears to be getting very anxious about the prospect of having her ACT hospital system compared to the rest of the nation. Apparently, according to Katy, the quality and safety aspects of hospitals can not possibly be compared because they are all different.

I suspect it is more likely that Katy is actually more worried that when compared to the rest of Australia the ACT hospital system will either not comply with or fall below the “standards” (the quantitative measures) against which you would be rating quality and safety.

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Sepi,
just in case you weren’t aware, public hospitals constitutionally come under the responsibility of the State and Territory governments. The feds can only intervene if the state and territory governments let them – hence why Katy is quietly hiding in a corner

One of the fun things about having a growing population.

There are a lack of GPs in Canberra also though. Sometimes it is literally impossible to get in to see one, even if you are willing to pay.

The whole health system seems to be eroding – nurses are resigning in droves, we have fewer and fewer drs, and many of them are imports, and waiting lists are growing and growing.

Something needs to be done.

In case you’re not medically inclined….Sats is the amount of oxygen in your blood. Normal people have 97-98% (so the nurse told me).

I love it how the signs say “If you’re experiencing difficulty breathing…please see a nurse immediately”.

In my case, they told me sit down and keep sucking on Ventolin.

Sats were under 88% by the time I got a bed. The amount of people in there for shit a GP could have dealt with pissed me off.

They just didn’t want to pay for the GP….

Captainwhorebags is correct – bed blocking is a huge issue which makes ED a really difficult environment. I walked into the ED at Calvary on monday and it was overflowing with patients, with no available beds on the ward. This is not an uncommon occurrance. TCH and Calvary have a bypasss system for when this occurs – ambulances are directed to the hospital NOT on bypass. Howevre only one hospital can be on bypass at a time (obviously – first in best dressed policy) so patients can continue to arrive when the hospitals dont have capacity. I know that TCH goes on bypass quite regularly and the impact on Calvary is huge.

I currently have afriend receivng radiotherapy in Sydney as the wait in canberra was 8 weeks – crazy!

But healthcare delivery is a complex service. We need to review waiting times and benchmarks – but we also need more trained healthcare professionals who are being paid appropriately with reasonable workload demands – ie $$$ and lots of them. I know our EBA ran out in April – and we still have not got a new one (we will luckily get back pay!) and the ACTPS has had super dropped back to the compulsory 9% from the previous 15% (which all Federal PS’s receive).

What message does that give people about the value of the staff at Calvary and TCH?

Are the ACT Govt willing to invest? Are the poeple of the ACT willing to vote accordingly?

I agree with Captainwhorebags. My wife was crook on Sunday night and, while it only took about an hour and a half to see a doctor, the blockage seemed to be a lack of a bed to put her in ( didnt need it in the end).In the space of 3 hours we were treated by a nurse, a doctor twice and had bloods taken/examined. While I would have preferred to be at home it wasnt a wholly negative experience. While the staff seemed rushed they knew what they were doing.
And, while the waiting room had a few people who looked like they could have waited until the next day its’ all subjective isnt it. What is important to me might not be important to you. Doesnt make it any less important. The Emergency system has it well covered with their priorities system. If a nruse deems that you need to see a doctor quickly then you see a doctor quickly. If you are deemed to be not that important then you wait a long time. Works well.

captainwhorebags10:23 am 25 Jul 07

If you have to wait to get into the ED, then it is more likely to be a case of bed block rather than staff shortage. General lack of beds in the hospital wards (often due to elderly patients waiting for nursing home spots) means that people are stuck in ED waiting to be admitted.

Even though the system is in a seriously bad state, if you are sick you will get seen eventually. If you’re not seriously ill, then expect to wait a while. At least hospital care isn’t a privilege solely for the wealthy.

I went to emergency at about 2.30am on a Saturday night, wasn’t that busy there were about 5 people waiting.
I spent 3 hours in emergency with a 17-year-old boy bleeding out on their floor. (He had a big cut in his leg)
I asked them about every ten mins when were they going to see him and kept getting told your next.
He finally passed out from blood loss. He had a blood pressure reading of 41 over 40. Pretty much not with the living.
By the time I had got home we had been there for over 24 hours for something that could have been cleaned in stitched within an hour.
I have no faith in the public health system…

gun street girl9:32 am 25 Jul 07

You guys do realise that the emergency department is but the tip of a much bigger iceberg, don’t you? You could staff the ED with one hundred doctors and one hundred nurses 24/7, but that wouldn’t make a whit of difference to your waiting lists.

DarkLadyWolfMother8:13 am 25 Jul 07

I’ve yet to have a good Emergency experience. In most cases it was simply too many people that needed to be treated by too few people. The nurses seemed to have to almost sprint between rooms, while doctors tried to be thorough and professional in the few minutes they could spare each patient.

In one case (and only one – just emphasising that), it seemed that nurses and doctors were too busy drinking coffee and joking around to be bothered with anything like patients.

There are quite a few people who don’t need to be there, but I’m not sure what options there are for people at 12 at night anymore. It used to be that (after Florey closed) there was simply nowhere other than CALMS (and they charged) to go.

What’s available now?

H duck – I heard Katy G say the second quote verbatim, live on ABC radio, I only caught the end, so she probably said both quotes.

It is a stupid point anyway – whoever is doing the comparison will know that a baby sleep school/hospital is different to major public hospitals.

ACT health care is struggling. As is NSW, and QLD by all accounts – and probably the rest. I can’t understand why some of our amazing budget surplus doesn’t go onto public health.

But elective surgery waits in the ACT are the longest in the country, so something is wrong here.

My sole experience in an ACT hospital was not that good – most nurses were quite good, but seemed rushed and stressed. Care was erratic.

I’ll be interested in the results of this review too.

I’ve never had to use emergency or be admitted to the Canberra Hospital yet, but I see a specialist there every few months. Doesn’t really seem too different from the QLD hospitals I used to go to, he’s a great doctor. I’m definitely interested in the mentioned report though…

In other news, ACT Government officials claim that a nationwide benchmark of students would not be possible as “every student and school is different”.

This article makes my brain hurt.

Perhaps I am tired, but both quotes attributed to Katy Gallagher seem mangled.
“We report on nearly every area of safety and quality that we can report on, and we report every three months so that’s on our infection rates within the hospital, its also unplanned returns to theatre and so I certainly wouldn’t be afraid of providing that information infact we do so publicly now,”
“Say take Canberra hospital here as a regional tertiary referral hospital which does a range of very complex procedures cannot be measured against another one of our hospitals in the ACT which is the QEII hospital for mothers and babies because there’s simply no way of comparing them,”

FWIW I spent a lovely journey through the public health system last week. It really did suck, but I did eventually get dealt with. I am sure our public health system is a lot better then other countries.

I also hate the queue-jumping babies.

Interesting problem – public health is badly underfunded so how do we skirt around that?

Compare them on a meaningless table which implies that it’s all their own fault.

I agree that hospital casualty sees too many basic “take two asprin and call me in the morning” cases, but waiting lists for ‘elective’ surgery are too long unless you can afford private hospital and the ‘service’ leaves something to be desired in some of the wards I’ve had to sit in with ill paremts/in-las in their 80s this year. Basic provision only with staff slow to respond – and while I’m sure some will say they’re too busy, some certainly aren’t and the food doesn’t inspire either. Someone needs to stop running hospitals as a business and accept they will cost money!

if people werent too tight to go to a doctor when they are sick, instead of going to a hospital waiting room, they a lot of these problems would disappear.

neanderthalsis3:41 pm 24 Jul 07

I wonder if they will count Hospitals that explode and kill people?

gun street girl3:24 pm 24 Jul 07

Whilst I agree with Katy (a rare thing) about the logistics of comparing hospitals (ie TCH is not likely to fare well given that it services a large catchment of people with poor access to healthcare, and therefore, outcomes are worse as a result – they present late and do badly) – it is undeniable that the ACT system barely has its head above water. Food for thought: http://impactednurse.com/

We have a problem when:

1) An asthmatic, with a severe asthma attack is left unsupervised for 4hrs in a cold waiting room
2) This is despite a GP calling ahead and speaking to the triage nurse and
3) The GP’s nurse driving the patient to the hospital herself and speaking to the triage nurse about the severity of the case.

Asthmatic ends up in hospital for a few days, strapped to an oxygen machine. Fun, fun, fun!

Gotta love ’em.

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