A man has died on an ambulance stretcher after waiting more than three hours for treatment at a regional hospital in Victoria, as rural doctors warn they are increasingly treating people in corridors and struggling to find intensive care beds for the most critically ill.
An investigation is underway into the death of the 70-year-old man, who went into cardiac arrest and died about 3.30pm on Monday after waiting 3½ hours for treatment at the Bairnsdale Hospital in East Gippsland.
Victoria’s hospital system has been stretched for months. Credit:Jason South
The Age has been told the patient was taken to the hospital by ambulance and arrived shortly before midday on Monday.
He was waiting for care alongside a group of other patients, who were lying on stretchers in the hospital’s emergency department.
A senior health source, who cannot be identified as they were not authorised to speak publicly, told The Age that Bairnsdale Hospital was facing an “increasingly desperate situation” amid severe staffing shortages and ambulance ramping outside the hospital “is rife and the worst it ever has been”.
Loading
The source said the hospital, which has 51 acute beds and 20 rehabilitation beds, was so full of sick patients that staff were being forced to treat people in stretchers in hospital corridors because there were no free beds.
In the hours before his death, the man was being cared for by ambulance liaison officers, as hospital staff dealt with crushing demand in the emergency department. At least four ambulances with patients were ramped outside, the state’s ambulance union said.
A Bairnsdale Regional Health Service spokesman said the hospital expressed its deepest sympathy to the patient’s family and friends.
“Bairnsdale Regional Health Service and Ambulance Victoria will work together to undertake a full investigation into the circumstances surrounding his death,” the spokesman said.
Simon Judkins, an emergency physician who works in hospitals in Melbourne and regional Victoria, said patients were coming to harm due to delays in receiving critical medical care at rural hospitals.
“It is unfathomable at the moment how awful it is with the delays in care and the ramping at regional hospitals,” he said.
Judkins said regional hospital staff were struggling to secure intensive care beds at Melbourne hospitals when they attempt to transfer seriously ill patients who require higher levels of critical care than a small hospital can provide.
Loading
In some hospitals, staff were working hours of overtime to keep patients alive until an intensive care bed could be found in Melbourne.
“The transfer service does a fantastic job to try and find beds, but the issue is often there are no ICU beds available in metro Melbourne,” Judkins said.
The ability to admit people in the grips of mental health crisis into a hospital bed was now almost impossible in rural areas, Judkins said.
Rural Doctors Association of Victoria president Rob Phair said the death at Bairnsdale Hospital was a reflection of “what happens when you have a system that is being completely overwhelmed.”
“The staff are doing their absolute best, but there is no capacity, so you don’t have enough beds in the emergency department, you don’t have enough nurses to provide observation for these patients,” Phair, who is a Bairnsdale GP and provides emergency and anaesthetic services at the hospital, said.
“You don’t have anywhere to put these patients. You’ve only got a limited number of doctors and no beds on the ward to admit them to.”
Without wanting to comment on the particulars of the man’s death, Phair said the challenges faced by Bairnsdale Hospital were indicative of the experience inside every regional hospital in Victoria, where locum doctors made up to 70 per cent of staff.
“This is a system-wide problem and if you spoke to doctors at Shepparton, Mildura, Traralgon or any regional EDs [emergency departments], they would all have similar stories,” he said.
He said it was not uncommon for staff to be treating patients in the corridors of rural hospitals when no beds were available, or outside in ambulance bays.
Recently, Albury Wodonga Health was forced to declare a “code yellow” after staff struggled to treat hundreds of patients in emergency departments on both sides of the border.
Phair said the healthcare system continued to be skewed against rural hospitals where services had long struggled to entice staff; a situation only worsened by the pandemic.
“A big part of the problem is staffing and we need a cultural change where the most disadvantaged communities and populations with the worst health outcomes, … like Mildura, Shepparton and Bairnsdale, are given priority and the industrial arrangements are given to healthcare workers,” he said.
Phair joined calls by emergency health workers who are demanding widespread system reforms to address chronic hospital bed and staffing shortages, a key cause of ambulance ramping.
Loading
The case at Bairnsdale Hospital is the latest potentially preventable death to emerge from delays in receiving care in the state’s strained healthcare system.
It followed revelations earlier this year that at least 12 people died from critical injuries or illness after calls to Victoria’s triple-zero service were never answered or were picked up too late.
The patient’s death also comes less than a fortnight after senior doctors and nurses told The Age that emergency department overcrowding was the worst it has been in years and leading to waits of up to 12 hours just to be seen.
A Victorian government spokesman said it would be inappropriate to comment on the man’s death while an investigation was taking place.
“Our heartfelt condolences go out to the family and friends of the man who died at Bairnsdale,” he said.
The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up here.