Page 2644 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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My advice is that clinically it is the most responsible way of dealing with very busy times in accident and emergency departments. Not surprisingly, over the winter months Canberra Hospital has been experiencing higher than normal periods of bypass. Over the period 1 January to 31 July 2006 Canberra Hospital has had load-sharing arrangements in place on 58 occasions for a total of 146 hours and 25 minutes. That is around three per cent of the time that the emergency department is open at Canberra Hospital.
The figures are up on the figures for last year. At about the same time last year there were a total of 62 hours and 20 minutes. At the same time we also experienced a six per cent increase in emergency department presentations over figures for the previous year. There has also been an 11 per cent increase in more serious emergency department presentations, those in categories one, two and three. So at any time throughout the day when the emergency department gets busy, it has to divert less urgent ambulance patients to the other hospital, in this case, Calvary Hospital.
However, that does not affect any other category of patient, nor does it mean that the hospital is closed, which is the message I have been trying to get out. The hospital is always open. When Mr Smyth gets this table, which he receives on a daily or a weekly basis, outlining the bypasses—
Mr Smyth: Do you get the same table?
MS GALLAGHER: I have access to the same table but I do not get it emailed directly to me. When Mr Smyth gets the table and responds with a media release, I try to counter it by stating that that is a way of managing peak periods of demand within the hospital and that the hospital is always open. I have been given advice that at different times when this issue runs in the media patients, in particular elderly patients, think the hospital is shut and they do not present to it.
We have not had a bypass media alert from Mr Smyth for a while—I think we did earlier this week—as interestingly it stopped in July. It did not go into August because there were only eight hours of bypass in August, so that would not have gone well in a media release. The media release would have referred to 32 hours, 42 hours, 46 hours and then eight hours. That would not have looked so good.
Members interjecting—
MR SPEAKER: Order!
MS GALLAGHER: So the media release would have shown the truth, which is that bypass occurs during peak periods of demand. If Mr Smyth had taken the last table he received that contained that information, he would have been able to add that into his media release and it would have run 23 hours, 34 hours, 46 hours, and then eight hours. It would have shown that this is about managing the load that presents to the emergency department on any day. No-one can predict what that will be like.
When I walked past the emergency department yesterday only two people were in it. I know that two weeks ago that department saw 170 people on one day. We just cannot predict what will happen in an emergency department on any day of the week. From time
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