Adjournment speech
August 4, 2021
Ms MAXWELL (Northern Victoria) (18:06): My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Health in the other place, and the action I seek is for the minister to detail how the government intends to address the persistent ramping issues that are affecting hospital admissions and creating further delays in ambulance responses.
The latest report, last month, of a patient with a spinal injury who was in a corridor of Sunshine Hospital for 14 hours is simply despairing. This patient was ramped outside the hospital for hours and then waited and waited for a bed. The Victorian Ambulance Union reports that patients are regularly waiting for 12 hours in ambulances outside hospitals or being treated by paramedics in corridors while they wait.
I have spoken numerous times in this Parliament about the pressure on ambulance services in northern Victoria, including a very sad case recently in my electorate where an aged-care resident waited 90 minutes for an ambulance, a delay which was attributed directly to hospital ramping.
These bottlenecks are placing enormous strain on our health workforce. When speaking with healthcare workers they convey the challenges of staff shortages and trying to find ways to discharge more patients safely to free up beds. They do an incredible job in an already pressured environment. The AMA warned in July that our hospital systems cannot cope with a flu epidemic, let alone a COVID epidemic, in what was described as an ‘acute public health disaster’. Yet the point of lockdown # 1 was to prepare our health system to cope, and 18 months later we seem in no better a position.
Now, this is not just a state hospital matter, nor an issue isolated to Victoria. The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners has called for a whole-health-system approach across both state and federal governments, including utilising general practice and community health. Other states are rolling out policy to take pressure off emergency departments—such as Tasmania, with extended care centres through general practices including a Medicare match scheme, extending access to GP hours and weekend operation. I expect such a prospect would be welcome in many regional centres also—if you could indeed resource them, given the wait time to see a GP.
The latest ambulance response time data is due for release, and I do not expect to be happily surprised by it. But I hope—I sincerely hope—I am wrong. I thank our healthcare workers, and I encourage the government to share with our communities what work they are doing in Victoria and with other levels of government to address these concerns.
