The doctors’ union and the Opposition say they have no idea which hospital beds Health Minister Jack Snelling was referring to today when he said 150 extra beds had been added to the system.
Snelling told radio FIVEaa that the State Government had “opened an extra roughly 150 hospital beds” to help reduce overcrowding in the state’s public hospitals.
He did not say where or over which time scale those hospital beds had been added.
It follows doctors’ claims, first revealed by InDaily on Friday, that more than one patient had died as a result of extreme overcrowding at the Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH).
SA Health has launched an investigation into the deaths, one of which has been referred to the Coroner.
Shadow health minister Stephen Wade called in to the radio program to question the numbers.
“Doctors I talk to say: Where are those beds? And I’d be delighted if the minister could provide details,” he said.
Wade said the State Government was using a spike in the flu epidemic this year as an “excuse” for poor management of hospitals.
“They say that the problems are a result of the spike in the flu epidemic, but a quote from the SASMOA report … said in winter in the emergency departments are overcrowded (and that) management knew six months ago that the RAH ED would be overcrowded and unsafe, and their only solution was ramping,” Wade said.
“What doctors are telling me is the main reason for that is the failure of the hospital system to work as a whole, and particularly the discharge of mental health patients.”
South Australian Salaried Medical Officers’ Association (SASMOA) spokesperson Bernadette Mulholland said she also had “no idea” which new beds Snelling was talking about.
This afternoon, SA Health told InDaily in a statement that ‘flex beds’ in emergency departments, as well as temporary beds in the hospital sector were included in the 150 beds figure.
“During this period of very high demand, SA Health has consistently opened more hospital beds across the metropolitan area,” the statement reads.
“The number of additional beds open across the system changes based on the level of demand.”
“In response to the ongoing increased demand, which has coincided with our worst flu season in years, more than 150 additional beds have opened in metropolitan Adelaide.”
Meanwhile, very little detail is known about the RAH deaths, other than that contained within claims by a doctor who spoke to Mulholland during her inspection of the RAH emergency department on September 1.
The doctor said the RAH emergency department was “an appalling and unsafe environment; patients have died due to overcrowding at the RAH and more will die”.
“Every day the people of South Australia are put at risk due to the way the RAH ED is managed by (hospital management) and in particular the way mental health patients are managed.”
Snelling said allowing nurses to discharge some hospital patient would potentially help reduce the severity of overcrowding in South Australia’s public hospital emergency departments.
He said he was considering the results of a Flinders Medical Centre trial of nurse discharges.
“It’s been extremely effective, and I’ve very keen to see it rolled out at all our hospitals,” Snelling said.
“We have to be very careful about it because obviously it’s about someone being discharged who at the end of the day will be a doctors responsibility.
“We have far less discharges from our hospitals over the weekend because there are less doctors there and indeed how long you spend in hospital can be determined by when you’re admitted.
“If you’re admitted early in the week, chances are you’re going to spend less time in a hospital than you are if you are admitted towards the end of the week.”
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