Ambulance and emergency department procedures have remained unchanged eight months after the State Government announced its hospital reform program, InDaily can reveal.
In February, Health Minister Jack Snelling told reporters ambulances would begin transferring patients from small emergency departments to so-called super EDs “in the next couple of months”.
This morning, the clinical ambassador for the State Government’s Transforming Health program, Professor Dorothy Keefe told InDaily there had yet to be any change to ambulance transfers as a result of the program.
“It’s probably a few months rather than a couple (before the ED changes are made),” said Keefe.
“Most of what has been going on has been planning work.
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“The implementation work, you’ll see rolled out over the next few months to years.
“But it will take the whole four years to get the whole program rolled out.”
One of the centrepieces of the Government’s transforming health program is the creation of ‘super emergency departments’, and the centralisation of services in larger hospitals.
Over winter this year, and in previous years, patients have been transferred from larger hospitals to smaller ones, in order to cope with excessive demand.
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Once the program is fully implemented, patients will be sent from smaller hospitals with downgraded services to larger hospitals with consolidated, higher-complexity services.
Some doctors have criticised the plans, arguing that over-capacity hospitals will not be able to cope with hundreds more patients.
Keefe argues, however, that if emergency department procedures were planned more effectively, consolidated services would provide better, faster health care.
“For a city this size, we need to have three major emergency departments, that’s quite enough,” she said.
“Having more than that actually dilutes the ability to treat people more effectively.
“We try to balance the load across the whole system, for all of the sites.
“The three large emergency departments (are about) matching the front of house activities to the back of house activities
“You don’t want a patient going to a hospital which that hospital can’t deal with (their condition).”
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