Dismal figures for Victorian public hospital performance in 2009, says report

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDApr 29 2010

A new report regarding performances of hospitals has come up with disturbing facts. The Your Hospitals report (July to December 2009) released yesterday revealed;

• 12% increase in admissions over past 6 months
• 5% increase in Emergency department presentations
• Inability of the hospitals to treat some of the high priority triage patients and admit others within the Government time frames.
• Emergency departments failed to meet government targets of treating 80 per cent of patients with severe pain within 10 minutes, and 75 per cent of patients with urgent symptoms within 30 minutes.
• Nearly one third of the patients presenting at emergency departments were not moved to hospital beds within eight hours.
• The hospitals did however reduce the amount of emergency department bypass to 3 percent and treated life threatening injuries immediately in 100 percent cases.
• There are three elective surgery criteria. Most hospitals did not meet al three.
• 40,899 patients on elective surgery waiting lists at the end of 2009. This was 3000 more than 2008.
• In the emergency rooms of the 229,754 patients treated, 11,081 did not receive care on time in the urgent (including moderately severe blood loss) and 58,742 in the semi-urgent (including abdominal pain) categories.
• Out of nine key performance indicators, most public hospitals failed to meet at least six.
• There has been a consensus that lack of funds could be a reason for this dismal show. At present State Government is considering allocation of funds in next week’s state budget to bail out the situation. David Davis, the Opposition's health spokesman agreed that there is need for more financial aid. “There's no doubt that there's significant work required at Bendigo to lift the performance and part of the reason is the Government's failure, over 11 years, to renew the hospital,” he said. Australian Medical Association Victorian state president Harry Hemley also emphasized the need for funds.

Victorian Health Minister Daniel Andrews in defence said that the pressures were great and assured that last year 730,000 more patients were treated in the last half of 2009 by public hospitals and this is a 40 percent rise from a decade ago. He said that the system had room for improvement and more could be promised after the federal health reforms signed last week. Prime Minister Rudd has earlier promised to reduce emergency room waiting to a maximum of four hours in 95 percent patients. At present it is eight hours. Andrews also said, “The four-hour target is not an easy thing to meet…. These are not forecasts, they are targets. Some will be met and some won't be met. But the guarantee is to give nurses and doctors extra support to treat more patients and provide better care.” “Ours is a strong system but it can always be better, it can always improve and we are committed 100 per cent . . . to drive those improvements,” he added.

Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu took this opportunity to point out that the Brumby government was turning a blind eye to the actual state of health in the region. “John Brumby cannot claim that his hospitals are the best in Australia given he has gone backwards under his own measures…Nine targets. Last time they failed five of those targets. This time they failed six of those targets.”