Source : the age
Hospital overcrowding and ambulance ramping would be eased by a “transit lounge” scheme to shift patients out of emergency department beds sooner, the state opposition said in its latest election pledge.
According to the $99 million plan, 10 new or expanded lounges would be reserved for patients who are ready to leave hospital but are awaiting medication or transport, Opposition Leader Jess Wilson said.
The lounges would free up hospital beds sooner for patients in emergency departments, while the fund would also support the rostering of extra staff as well as extended operating hours, according to the Liberal plan.
Hospitals where ramping is most severe will be prioritised, but Wilson did not confirm their locations. Ramping occurs when paramedics are forced to wait with their patients in ambulances outside hospitals until beds become available.
“Victorians shouldn’t be stuck waiting for hours in an emergency department because a hospital bed is being occupied by someone who is ready to go home,” Wilson said.
“We will deliver up to 10 new or expanded patient transit lounges to free up beds faster and help get patients out of emergency departments and into the care they need.”
Before the latest announcement, Premier Ben Carroll earlier on Sunday accused the state opposition of trying to “Americanise our public health system”.
“You’re seeing today, the Liberal Party announcing a policy to fund public dollars into private healthcare,” Carroll said.
“One Nation have a policy to do the same, to Americanise our public health system,” he said.
“Sending public taxpayers’ dollars to the private health system is not supporting public beds, public nurses [or] public doctors.”
The premier was reacting to an earlier Liberal election pledge in which the party promised to divert thousands of public patients to private hospitals for elective surgery at no cost.
Wilson said the policy would deliver an extra 25,000 surgeries per year, and tackle the state’s ballooning elective surgery waiting list, which has grown from 58,062 to 68,730 in the past 12 months.
This policy would cost $1.27 billion over four years, and would be funded by cash offset by the winding up of Breakthrough Victoria, the state-owned venture capital firm.
Asked on Sunday if it was bad to “Americanise” the state’s healthcare system, Wilson responded: “Not at all.”
“This is happening in Queensland today. In fact, the Labor government has implemented it here in the past,” she said.
“We have capacity in our healthcare system. We need to be partnering … our private hospitals with the public system to make sure that Victorians get surgery sooner.”
Last week, The Age reported 170 beds at the brand new Footscray Hospital remain closed due to a lack of operational funding to meet surging demand.
Footscray Hospital is administered by Western Health, where demand for emergency surgery has increased by 51 per cent in the past five years.
The Victorian Agency for Health Information reported the median waiting time for a triage nurse or doctor after arriving at the hospital’s emergency department was 31 minutes. This is double the statewide average of 15 minutes.
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