Emergency departments are clogged

Patients are waiting for hours or giving up. What’s going on?

This article first appeared in The Conversation and is authored by Associate Professor Robyn Clay-Williams and Professor Henry Cutler

Around 25,000 people visit hospital emergency departments across Australia every day. Many of them are reporting waiting for hours to be seen. Some give up and leave, only to have their condition deteriorate.

“Ambulance ramping” – where ambulances queue outside hospitals to hand over patients – has become more common and means some people wait long periods before they even arrive at emergency.

Of the 8.8 million presentations at emergency departments each year, one in three people wait more than four hours to be treated and admitted to a ward for further care, or to be discharged.

Our fragile public health system and its staff need urgent attention before emergency departments can recover.

Read the full article at The Conversation.

CENTRES RELATED TO THIS NEWS

Centre for Healthcare Resilience and Implementation Science

Macquarie University Centre for the Health Economy

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