Lack of hospital beds puts older patients in Australian emergency departments at risk of death

Research undertaken earlier this year at the Canberra Hospital found that older patients who wait more than four hours to be transferred to a bed in the main body of the hospital are 51% more likely to die than patients who waited less than four hours.

A survey from the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM) has found that 70% of patients in Australian emergency departments are waiting over eight hours to be moved to a hospital bed after receiving emergency care.

This phenomenon – known as access block – occurs when there aren’t enough free beds in the main body of the hospital for ED patients to be moved into. It’s the main cause of ambulance ramping, because paramedics can’t unload their patients into an ED that’s already full.

The survey – which covered all 121 Australian emergency departments accredited by ACEM – paints a stark picture of a hospital system at breaking point.

“These figures are consistent with surveys we’ve collected over the past five years which show that too many patients are waiting too long to receive the proper care,”said Associate Professor Drew Richardson, who conducted the study, “They reflect a hospital system that is critically overburdened and that is putting patients into the firing line.”

Over half of the hospitals surveyed reported that they had at least one patient who had been waiting for a bed for more than 12 hours, the point at which the NHS in the UK requires a report to the Minister.

“A statistic like that should be sending an alarm bell to healthcare authorities across the country,” said Associate Professor Richardson, “It’s completely unacceptable.”

Longer stays in the ED are associated with poorer health outcomes, especially among older patients.

Research undertaken earlier this year at the Canberra Hospital found that older patients who wait more than four hours to be transferred to a bed in the main body of the hospital are 51% more likely to die than patients who waited less than four hours.

“Figures like this bear out the day-to-day experience of many emergency medicine doctors, which is that our hospitals nationwide are overburdened,” said Dr Anthony Cross, President of ACEM, “This leads to increasing staff stress and burn-out. However, the worst aspect of this is that patients are being put at risk and that is not acceptable.”

Source: https://www.acem.org.au/