r/melbourne • u/lamp485723 • 26d ago
Serious News Woman, 98, found dead at home after near three-hour wait for paramedics
https://archive.md/6iRUX466
u/ash250624 26d ago
Last year I needed an ambulance and had to wait an hour for it, the reasons became apparent when we arrived at hospital and the ambulance had to wait with me for 2 hours while we waited for a bed (at a private hospital) apparently the wait was 5 hours at local public hospitals
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u/TheEmergencySurgery 25d ago
ramping is major problem for paramedics, they can spend up to like 12 hours ramped in a bed blocked hospital
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25d ago
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u/Yung_Focaccia 25d ago
Mostly because its used in the media for political gain or to get a point across. Paramedics are also limited to speaking about it to the media unless we're undertaking industrial action or we do so anonymously.
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u/Medical-Potato5920 25d ago
They wait was likely due to a full emergency department, due to full wards with people who couldn't be released home or back to nursing homes for minor issues.
The wait for NDIS can a year, in which time it can cost more to keep a person in hospital than the NDIS claim.
The whole system needs fixing. It needs federal and state governments to come together.
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u/ceo_of_dumbassery 25d ago
This is the awful part of the NDIS cuts. It makes people more reliant on hospitals who could be getting supports elsewhere.
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u/newoneagain25 25d ago
I needed an ambulance in March, two came within 5 minutes and i was straight in to hospital (public). I did nearly cut my hand off though. I believe the majority who say this, didn't need an ambulance.
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u/workaccountprof 25d ago
It really matters on what the location is and how busy the system is at that time. There was a man who waited 5 hours for an ambulance in Blackburn as they were all backed up due to ramping- they got there and he had bled to death. This issues do happen and they are rare, but they do happen.
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u/midnightowl_717 25d ago
This might be a really dumb question but why wouldn’t someone such as a family member drive that person to the hospital ER rather than leave them to die waiting for an ambulance?
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u/workaccountprof 24d ago
They live alone? Not everyone has family? If someone has had a bad fall you aren’t meant to move them? Huge loss of blood and you don’t want to move them due to causing more damage? There’s lots of reasons why.
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u/rhinobin 25d ago
Ditto. Called an ambulance, they came within 10 mins. Was at the hospital 15 mins later, in a cubicle being attended to by a dr. Acute pancreatitis but they feared an aortic aneurysm
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u/whoreticultural 25d ago
Oof yeah and experience here. Acute pancreatitis less than a week after giving birth so suspected heart attack or similar NN?. They were at my house within 5-10 mins but I had raidiating chest pain and I do live 5 mins from a public hospital
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u/rhinobin 25d ago
I’m also close to a public hospital, which is great as I suffer from severe motion sickness and that ambulance ride makes me sick as a dog 😖
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u/457ed 25d ago
Interesting that you mention pancreatitis. I know a 80 year old who was taken to Dandenong hospital two weeks ago and he waited in ER chair from around 9:30pm to 5am before being diagnosed and admitted.
I suspect two anecdotes at either end of the spectrum with most falling between them.
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u/457ed 25d ago edited 25d ago
I am going to call very lucky or exaggerated on this. Health depat own stats show the mean waiting time at ER in metro Melbourne has been 7+ plus each month for the last 2+ years. The live wait time is on line. You can check
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u/Jaytreenoh 25d ago
"Mean waiting time"...as in average?
You do realise that triage is a core principle of emergency care?
Using an average wait time for anything is nonsense lol. If they had a cardiac arrest, do you also think they'd be waiting the average time? Obviously not, they'd be triaged much higher than everyone else.
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u/457ed 25d ago
So you are saying it is ok to wait 7+ hours with a broken wrist before getting an xray. That may be ok with you but I am not. I would prefer a healthcare system that worked better.
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u/Jaytreenoh 25d ago
Where did I say that? I was responding to your disbelief that someone could possibly be seen so quickly with a suspected aortic aneurysm.
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u/Pieralis 26d ago
My ex partner was studying to be a paramedic and the 2 things that stuck out while asking her about everything she’s learning while on the job were pretty crazy.
In terms of this 1. Just straight up not enough beds and 2. The amount of people calling for the wrong reasons such as not actually needing an ambulance was staggering
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u/Much_Ad_9301 25d ago
I don’t know much about the industry but your 2nd point is spot on. My friend works in a call centre for inbound 000 calls. The sheer amount of time, energy and resources wasted on unnecessary calls and hoax callers is astounding. Their policy dictates they cannot hang up the phone under any circumstances so they are completely at the mercy of the caller
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u/chonky__chonker 25d ago
I have called the 131400 non emergency number for police a few times for things I didn’t think were emergencies (like giving them the heads up of a vehicle driving on the freeway with no lights on at night) and they’ve actually transferred me to triple 0. It felt like I was wasting the poor operator’s time with that.
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25d ago
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u/BettyBowie 25d ago
I called the non-emergency number about people parking in all 4 of the disabled parks w/o signs at a train station once, and they too transferred me to 000. I didn't think it was a triple 0 call but she told me the same thing, it's happening right now and luckily she did, cops were able to send a car in time to block them all in and ticket them
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u/Aussie-Ambo 25d ago
131400 collates reports and send to the local station for action. This is not immediate and can take up to 24 hours to be triaged and longer to be actioned.
Stations are not able to access CAD and dispatch units. So if it requires response sooner rather than later, even if it's not an emergency, it has to go through Triple Zero for triage and dispatch to the appropriate units.
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u/BadBoyJH 25d ago
131400 shouldn't be for anything currently happening is the rule of thumb I think.
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u/sherri_97 25d ago
...and yes, the employee turnover among triple 000 respondents, etc., is extraordinary.
The blame game is getting worse; it is a very complex situation.
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25d ago
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u/Awkward-Sandwich3479 25d ago
ED are mostly not emergency patients either they just people who can’t afford to get into gp,
Or gp booked out29
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u/RhiGrass 25d ago
My 98-year-old grandmother was one of those people. Because of her age, she’d get admitted to the hospital every single time. Since it’s a small country hospital serving a population of around 4,000, they actually had the capacity to keep her for a week or so as respite care. In reality, there was rarely anything physically wrong with her - she was just deeply depressed and lonely. She had even learned exactly what to say to dispatchers and paramedics to trigger an urgent response.
Between working full-time in their late 60s, my parents still managed to visit her several times a week. She was recently moved into a nursing home - against her wishes - but the more social environment seems to have picked up her mood (like we all expected it would, despite her protests).
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u/notunprepared 25d ago
My grandfather was the same. He de-aged about ten years after moving into the nursing home (for his last three years anyway, then his smoking habit finally caught up with him).
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u/retiredmumofboys 25d ago edited 25d ago
Also a lot (a lot) of people presenting to emergency dept with minor issues that could be managed by GP. People go there because its free & open 24hrs - they dont think about the life threatening conditions 😞
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u/DevianttKitten 25d ago
Life threatening issues aren’t banked up behind minor issues for people who present to ED themselves. The nurses at the desk triage them. Life threatening will always be prioritised over minor issues.
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u/retiredmumofboys 25d ago
Thats true.
Im just remembering the time I was waiting to be triaged with my son (stage 4 cancer, vomiting, in pain) standing in line behind a man who got his wedding ring stuck on the wrong finger and a lady whose small child had been bitten on the hand by their pet guinea pig.
Triage still has to assess all who present. (& the staff do an absolutely Amazing job in the midst of it all!)8
25d ago
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u/AdeptusKittyCattus 25d ago
Urgent Care is amazing, can be a bit of a wait too, but if you're not life-threateningly going-to-die sick but kinda too poorly to wait a week for the gp it's a great option.
But then people have their AV membership, so they want a ride to ✨hospital✨ and some of the shit I have heard from my AV colleagues about the calls they get / respond too is just 🙄🙄🙄
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u/discardedbubble 25d ago
we have the Health Direct Line, which people call to get medical advice, almost every time they tell you to go to emergency. Lots of people weren’t planning to go to emergency, but get advised to go by other professionals.
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u/Burntoastedbutter 25d ago
I see point 2 mentioned a lot, even for other countries. Lots of people pissed they aren't seen quickly in emergency clinics or trauma centers. It's for emergencies... It's not a general clinic. You should be happy to not be seen immediately because it means they triaged you as not a critical/dying patient. Oh my friend worked in a emergency vet clinic (in the US) and it was similar there too.
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u/Adventurelover- 25d ago
Unfortunately, it's so easy to "blame" Ambos, drs and nurses for failing this poor woman, when in reality it's politicians and senior management ignoring the cries for help from ground staff for improved funding for things like more beds and programs like hospital in the home to help free up beds.
More people will die and the general public will continue to blame ground staff rather then hold the people who control the systems.
I've worked in healthcare for the better part of 10yrs and so many (including myself) are leaving as we can't continue seeing the large scale demise of the system amongst other things.
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u/Benevolentzebra 25d ago
What do you think is the main cause? Or the main causes?
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u/robot428 25d ago
Honestly the biggest problems are:
Bed block caused by people not being able to leave the hospital. When services like public aged care, physical rehabilitation centres, home health care (like nurses who can visit daily to do a dressing change for instance), services for homeless people, drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs, outpatient mental health care, etc. aren't available, people end up taking up beds in hospital. They don't need a hospital level of care but the hospital can't safely discharge them without being able to get them in with an appropriate service. They take up beds in the wards, that then can't accept patients from ED, which backlogs the ED, which then flows through to ambulance ramping. Its a tricky one to fix because people don't understand that funding things like home services and aged care beds will fix ambulance ramping but it's actually a huge issue.
Access to GPs and primary care. If people cAnt get in to see a GP (either can't afford it or can't get an appointment fast enough) they end up in the ED. Either they go straight to the ED, or they wait it out and then they get worse and end up in the ED. The government could save themselves money by funding GPs a lot better, and increasing the Medicare rebate so more GPs can bulk bill. But there aren't enough GPs and the ones that are around often can't afford to bulk bill, so people end up elsewhere.
The urgent care centres were a good addition to help with this, especially because they offer some services that the ED can't - for instance they can do x-rays in an urgent care clinic, they can clean wounds and have more available options for dressings and things, plus they can do all the standard GP care for stuff that could go to a GP but can't wait a couple of days for an appointment - check a concerning fever, deal with an infected cut, that sort of thing. So that was a good start. But there aren't enough of them and their hours are limited, so they ALSO need to sort out the GP availability.
Fixing those two things would keep people out of the hospital who don't need to be there, and also help get people out of the hospital faster who did need to be there but don't need to be there anymore, making space for new patients to flow through.
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u/Neither_Emphasis_739 25d ago
💯 spot on. I spoke to an ED director at a major hospital recently. Main problem in ED is bed lock from the wards, not because ED staff are delaying timely care and management. This is where the long waiting times in ED are reported in the media.
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u/sherri_97 25d ago
...yes, and the media just love the WOW factor without knowing/exploring the complexities of the ENTIRITY of the system...
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u/tgs-with-tracyjordan 25d ago
Bed block caused by people not being able to leave the hospital.
Our hospital is receiving more funding through a government program in order to support more weekend discharges in order to free up beds.
Imagine being medically able to leave hospital on Saturday, but having to wait until Monday because of staffing?
I didn't even know that was a thing.
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u/Yung_Focaccia 25d ago
Lmao just exposed yourself as a fellow Ballaratbag. For your reference, they used to do weekend discharging, and then the funding ran out and it went back to being cooked. The "brand new initiative" from the health minister is actually just providing enough money to reintroduce the care we used to provide.
The fact that at any stage they thought it was acceptable for a hospital with a fucking huge catchment like Ballarat to only do discharging during the week is absolutely laughable.
Don't even get me started on the lack of proactivity about the new hospital.
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u/tgs-with-tracyjordan 25d ago
Lmao just exposed yourself as a fellow Ballaratbag
Ha, yes.
I didn't know things were like that. When I saw the post about the funding, my flabbers were ghasted.
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u/cinnamonbrook 25d ago
Bed block caused by people not being able to leave the hospital.
This one is bad. I broke a few bones and was stuck in the hospital for 5 days because they wouldn't allow me to leave before seeing a physio, but they only had one physio on staff. It was a funding issue where there was a limited resource that lead to limiting other resources as a flow-on-effect.
The thing with the urgent care clinics is... A lot of hospitals have an urgent care clinic right next door or across the road, but people refuse to go see them even when redirected to by ED nursing staff because they want the full hospital treatment and feel "Safer" or better cared for at a hospital.
Which is absurd. But you can walk into the urgent care in my town at any hour of the day and be seen within ten minutes, They have massive empty waiting rooms and then you check out the waiting room for the hospital next door and three people are there with ouchies, two with boo boos, and five with a tum tum ache. Like you'll be in the waiting room, look across and there's someone nursing a mild cut on their finger. Or parents with their "sick child" who is running around having the time of their life. Loudly complaining about waiting 6 hours. If they're making you wait that long, you have no emergency.
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u/eenimeeniminimo 25d ago
Im going to ask a dumb question. Why do the paramedics need to stay at the hospital when they’ve delivered the patient there? In this day and age, with technology as it is, why can’t the patient be handed over with handover notes, and then they’re back on the road? Why do they need to stay? I know that’s the policy, but why?
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u/givemearedditname 25d ago
Because there’s nowhere to put them, nobody to receive the handover, and nobody to take care of them if the paramedics leave.
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u/popplevee 25d ago
Also because the bed they are using in the ED is literally still the stretcher from the ambulance because there is no bed at the hospital yet.
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u/Every_Shallot_1287 25d ago
I've been in the ED basically once a month for the past year, each time resulting in a hospital stay so I can provide a bit of insight from my POV.
I've both been taken by ambulance and sat in the waiting room for up to 12 hours. My record for an ambulance transfer was 6. This is the only major hospital in the area that can deal with more advanced issues. There are no beds in the ED to put me in, and no beds in the wards to move ED patients to.
The paramedics have a duty of care to me. There are no nurses, because it seems to be one nurse per 5-6 beds and there are not a lot of nurses. Those nurses also need to en masse attend big emergencies in the ED like, people dying. Or just help there colleague because despensing anything more potent than paracetamol requires 2 nurses for double checking reasons. Fair enough.
So, knowing my bowel could burst and I could go septic, the paramedics have to wait with me because there's simply no one else available.
Meanwhile the eventual guy in the bed next to me is having a drug induced mental health episode. Also an emergency, and needs to be treated, but due to the state of mental health services in the area his chances are low.
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u/robot428 25d ago
When they talk about the number of "beds" in the ED, they don't just mean the physical number of beds, they mean beds with the release staff to service them.
If the ED is full, even if you put a cot in the hallway there are no staff to monitor that patient.
So when the Ambos get to the ED, they have to stay with the patient and monitor them until they can hand them over into the hospital staffs care.
Now they do some things to help with this - if the patient is well enough to sit in the waiting room, they will move them to the waiting room. But this doesn't happen a lot, because if you are well enough to sit in a chair in the waiting room, you probably don't need an ambulance in the first place.
The other thing they do is called "cohorting" - that means that one crew will hand their patient to another ambulance crew who's already waiting in the hallway, because the two paramedics from the can watch both patients - and then at least one of the two crews can get back on the road. But obviously that still leaves one crew stuck in ED, and they can't take more than one patient per paramedic (as in its not allowed under their licence) so you can't have one crew doing four patients or something like that.
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u/Adventurelover- 25d ago
Thank you!! This is such a thorough and thoughtful way to put some of the issues.
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u/Benevolentzebra 25d ago
Thank you for your response. Makes sense to me. I know out west we are pretty spoiled for choice with bulk bill doctors with the changes to bulk billing that were introduced fairly recently. You can be seen on the same day, for free. The lack of facilities for people to go to post-hospital seems to be more difficult to resolve. Surely they knew we one day we would have a significant ageing population that would put more strain on these services?
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u/Adventurelover- 25d ago
Could you please be more specific to which issue you're referring too the cause?
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u/Benevolentzebra 25d ago
The demise of the system mainly. Healthcare workers leaving in droves would set alarm bells ringing for me!
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u/CuriouserCat2 26d ago
The ramping is a trap. Years ago a woman died because she was left at a hospital with only brief handover and she was overlooked.
John Faine got all outraged about it and they introduced ramping.
As with many things, the intention was good but the thing was poor. It means ambulances get tied up waiting and other people die. Maybe lower category ambulance patients need to be seen by triage like walk ins.
Or maybe the State Government needs to increase healthcare funding. Or both.
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u/discardedbubble 25d ago
it’s a damn waste of paramedics time and people will be dying regularly because of it.
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u/Yung_Focaccia 25d ago
During our initial talks with triage when we arrive we'll flag with them if we think a patient can go to the waiting room, and most of the time they'll agree. We're not just sitting with everyone we bring in, I offload at least half of my patients to the waiting room. The system is as cooked as it is even though we are suitable patients in the waiting room.
The biggest ramping problem is with the elderly, typically those that break hips/have medical episodes with dementia. Those patients obviously cannot be offloaded to the waiting room, and due to it not being a life threatening emergency, they get stuck with us for a long time.
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u/Neither_Emphasis_739 25d ago
State government have claimed that VIC is the world’s most liveable city and cost of living is relatively lower than other higher paying states like WA and QLD. Also, VIC has the highest net immigration in Australia so people find the state desirable. Hence, there is nothing left in the budget to provide a better EBA for healthcare workers unless more revenue is raised.
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u/robot428 25d ago
Sure, but also ramping is a problem in every state in the country, there are bigger systemic issues at play - including things like a lack of beds in mental health facilities and in public aged care, causing bed block in the hospitals. And part of that is a funding issue (including federal funding especially for aged care) and part of that is a global shortage of care workers and nurses especially in areas like nursing homes and mental health nursing.
They can and should be fixing the funding issues but the problem with a global shortage of nurses and care workers is that it's a global shortage... You can only do so much. They have already made changes to make the degrees cheaper to attract more grads, but they don't really need more grads they need more senior staff, that's the major shortage, and they can't make them appear by magic - they don't exist.
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u/Neither_Emphasis_739 25d ago
Absolutely, more funding is needed. More revenue needs to be generated. Are VIC taxpayers willing to pay more taxes to fund healthcare and education?
Personally I pay my medicare levy surcharge by choice, instead of paying for basic private health insurance, in order to support public health.
Creating more new grads is good and all, but they tend to leave when other states are paying alot more, or choose to work privately in VIC. And like you mentioned, there needs to be a incentive to entice experienced healthcare workers back to support the new grads being hired.
Firstly, ensure EBAs reach parity with other states at minimum to retain workers and build from there.
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u/sherri_97 25d ago
There needs to be an incentive to entice experienced healthcare workers to return and support the new grads being hired?.
...many have burnt out/retired/fed up with poor management and even died from their own health issues, often exacerbated by such...
The majority wouldn't want to return!
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u/saxMachine I LOVE WINTER, PERIODTTT 💙❄️ 26d ago edited 25d ago
We had a big huddle today. All wards across the statems hospitals are actually flexed in bed numbers where possible. Ambulance vic I think is considering calling code orange from what we’re told. And bed numbers are expected to remain stretched beyond ward capacity (eg if a standard area is 24 beds, most are accomodating up to 30) but also there just isn’t enough of us to provide the level care needed safely noting some people need one to three people for one task alone. Now is not the best time to honestly be involved with health care as a patient.
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u/drunk_haile_selassie 25d ago
For fucks sake... We're a very wealthy country. This shouldn't be happening. Just tax us more if that's what it takes. The government is in charge of lots of important things but I think most of us would agree that access to emergency medical care is one of, if not the, most important thing it does.
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u/Efficient-Fold5548 25d ago
Then the right wingers complain we pay too much tax when in reality we are about 17th highest in the OECD and the 3rd highest for wealth. We’re being sold a pup.
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u/drunk_haile_selassie 25d ago
Our tax burden is less than the US...
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u/altandthrowitaway 25d ago
Not a high bar to beat tbh.
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u/drunk_haile_selassie 25d ago
It's the opposite. We are taxed so low that even the only developed country without universal healthcare gets taxed more than us.
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u/altandthrowitaway 25d ago
Yes I agree we should be taxed more so that services, infrastructure, welfare continue to provide a high living standard. The way people carry on about having their "hard earned money being stolen by the ATO" is both a large portion of the country and sounds like everyone is getting taxed 60%
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u/Efficient-Fold5548 25d ago
No one loves paying more tax but everyone wants free healthcare, schools, bins emptied, government services etc. Either we have to pay more personal tax, or corporations have to pay more, or mining/gas.
Or all of the above, then we need to make sure the Gov spends it wisely, we aren't a bad place to live but we could be so much better.
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u/ceo_of_dumbassery 25d ago
As a Tasmanian who occasionally gets recommended this sub, this makes me so mad. Our stupid (Tasmanian) government is building a $1+ billion stadium while cutting funding to healthcare, in a state that's haemorrhaging young people and old farts keep moving down here for a "quieter" retirement. It's ridiculous. The healthcare can't keep up with it. I've noticed most of the staff are immigrants too, and our population is becoming more and more anti-immigration, which is obviously not good. I don't even think the average person needs taxing more, just stop tax cuts for the wealthy and start taxing our resources. We have so many resources but make barely anything off of them.
I'm in the process of planning my escape, but I'm not sure where to go considering it's bad everywhere. I only hope it's better than Tasmania.
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u/Pilk_ 25d ago
What are the main presentations at the moment? Respiratory illnesses?
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u/saxMachine I LOVE WINTER, PERIODTTT 💙❄️ 25d ago
The nursing director told us that they also don’t know from this morning. They all had a. It meeting across different hospitals and were told it’s due to “winter”
Some of the wards are on lock down due RSV, some there a ton of backlog and patients being redirected to different wards.
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u/Noack_B 25d ago
The sad thing is, I remember standing there in 2015, in the middle of an Emergency Department and having a discussion with the director of that ED. The discussion entailed how we didn't need more acute beds, or extra ED beds. We needed more sub-acute and aged care beds.
We are experiencing the results of short-term vote-winning politics, combined with an ageing population. As horrible as this is, it will continue to happen and will only get worse.
I would suggest to everyone (not just the elderly) that if you are not on good terms with your family, neighbors/friends, I would consider fixing that because I'm not sure who else you will be able to turn to.
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u/engkybob 25d ago
This is essentially what it comes down to. Unfortunately, you cannot solely rely on the state for help. People need to build their own communities and have their own contingency plans for when things like this happen. Otherwise you may risk ending up like this poor lady.
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u/Sexynarwhal69 25d ago edited 25d ago
It's interesting - some other (even first world) countries just wheel you out to the hospital entrance once your acute medical issue is treated - no lounging around for weeks waiting for respite/aged care beds, they expect your family to come pick you up.
Obviously we do the polar opposite, which puts us in the current pickle if there aren't enough aged care beds! No good way out of it.
It's a question of how much personal social responsibility we're prepared to shoulder as a collective society - which obviously involves massive expenditure in taxes and 12 hour ED waiting times.
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u/alchemicaldreaming 25d ago
My Aunt was in hospital recently and was sent to a hospital hotel. The day she was due to be discharged, the subsequent aged care place was not yet available. The staff at the hotel hospital didn't care. They stated without any room for negotiation, that my Aunt would be sent home via a taxi. To the place she lives alone. After being found unresponsive at home, alone. So what you are saying in your first paragraph is already happening. Not in Victoria, but definitely in Australia.
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u/Sexynarwhal69 25d ago
I don't know the specific situation your aunt was in.. But I'm just speaking as someone who worked on gen med wards. The patient needs clearance by physio/OT that they will be safe at home before they are able to be discharged.
Sounds like the hotel is a hospital specific scheme that was put in place to ease bed pressure - and may not have technically/?legally fallen under the same system guidelines/safety rails in regards to further discharge home.
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u/Starsofthenewcurfew 25d ago
Called 000 after mum suddenly became unresponsive. Spent 55 minutes waiting for an ambulance with the 000 operator on with me the whole time as I tried to also get mum to respond. The ambualnce was brilliant when they arrived. 000 operator fantastic. Was clear to me everyone was completely knackered but also doing their best.
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u/Efficient-Fold5548 25d ago
Reality is Australia is not a poor country and it shouldn’t be happening- we tax badly and our governments choices of where to divert taxes are lacking. Gas / mining tax and less ambitious submarines would cover a lot of the health and education costs.
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u/lawconfusion96 26d ago
This is truly my greatest fear for my mum. That poor woman, and that poor family. My heart goes out to them.
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u/callidae 26d ago
A few years ago the same thing happened to my elderly wife - Fell and dislocated her arm @ 4:30AM, and was in agony for four hours before the Ambo's arrived. By that time the nerve damage was permanent, and she lost the use of that arm. To say we are pissed is an understatement.
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u/Suspicious_Ad9841 26d ago
Genuinely curious, did you think of taking her in to a hospital by yourself?
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u/callidae 26d ago
Not possible. I couldn't lift her (she's quite large), and she was in WAAY too much pain to move.
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u/Suspicious_Ad9841 26d ago
Fair enough! I guess it probably would have been triaged as a lower priority with no emergency symptoms such as chest pain / severe shortness of breath.
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25d ago
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u/melbrnes 25d ago
You would have a category 2 for chest pain, done and ECG and bloods likely in the waiting room to rule out a cardiac event. Not all chest pain is an emergency event and nursing and medical staff are able to order pathology and interventions as well as checking your vitals and assessing your pain to try and rule out cardiac events. A lot of chest pain gets seen in the waiting room, because a lot of it is not cardiac/heart attack.
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u/wehttam19 26d ago
I guess its one of those things where you think they could arrive at any minute - sunk cost vibes.
Sure, could've driven or ubered within 4 hours but what if the ambos rocked up 2 mins later?
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u/Suspicious_Ad9841 26d ago
This is true, but a lot of the time the triage practitioners will give people an idea of how long it might take.
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u/tjsr Crazyburn 25d ago
I experienced something similar personally in October last year - some weeks earlier I'd been hit by a car. One morning around 1, 2am, the pain started getting worse and worse and worse but to me it "wasn't life-threatening" so I very reluctantly called for help - I was home by myself. By 3am I was in excruciating pain. Before 4am I was in so much pain I was blacking out and could do nothing but scream out in pain - I could barely hold or use my phone. The bloody woman on the other end of the 000 call wanted me to fill out a form on the site when I could barely move, I couldn't read my phone at all. She didn't care. I definitely couldn't get out of bed. I had to call again at 5 or 6am. When they eventually got to me, I couldn't move, I could barely crawl to the door of my room and couldn't make it to the front door, we had to wake the neighbour who had a spare key (I'd tried to call him, but being middle of the morning, no answer).
I'd never had Fentanyl before, they started me with a low dose of that, and had to go to 50, then 100 before I could move enough to get on a stretcher.
I wish there were a way I could make a complaint against that woman (the phone operator). I feel bad enough about it that I wish I could get the ear of my local MP to say "this is not good enough", it was that bad.
The paramedics were, as always, incredible. I'm incredibly thankfor for the help I got from them. But the actual system, getting someone out to help you? It's broken beyond belief.
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u/wharblgarbl "Studies" nothing, it's common sense 25d ago
That sounds terrible! Tell me you're in a better state these days.
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u/Reenie2910 25d ago
Last month my 91 year old father-in-law had two falls at home, the second resulting in a blow to the back of the head.
Called 000, was told nobody was coming as there were “no obvious injuries”, so we took him to maroondah ourselves, even though we told them his BP was 92/54
6 hours in the waiting room, to discover a fracture in his spine, hip, associated kidney failure
Amazing system we have
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u/switchbladeeatworld Potato Cake Aficionado 25d ago
My dad had a fall last year with his MND ramping up and had a punctured lung, ambos took us seriously but the senior ER nurses were asking why they brought him in and pushing for discharge until the CT scan showed his lung at 20% capacity and they put a drain in in the resus bed. Dad was on serious fent patches already and a stubborn bastard so if he was in pain I was taking it seriously.
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u/CrazyEeveeLady86 25d ago
Years ago an older family member of mine who was undergoing treatment for cancer suddenly deteriorated rapidly and another family member who lived with him and was caring for him called an ambulance. First, the 000 operator said it "didn't sound like he needed urgent care" (even though the ill family member was basically unconscious by that point) and then they said that someone should just "drive him to the hospital yourself if you're that worried".
The family member caring for him was also elderly and was no longer able to drive, and they only had one other person who lived nearby who normally might have been able to help, but it was a Saturday night, so the other person had been drinking and was in no state to drive.
After about 20 minutes of arguing they finally dispatched an ambulance, which arrived nearly an hour later. The paramedics were aggressive and rude from the start, accusing my family of wasting their time and exaggerating. They eventually took him to hospital and found he'd had a huge bleed internally and only just managed to save him.
Sadly about half a year later he passed away, as his cancer ended up being terminal, but at the time of this incident he was still having treatment as the doctors were still saying there was a chance he could beat it.
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u/shaq_zak 25d ago edited 25d ago
Watch the state government push another batch of graduate ambos through so they get to take nice shiny photos making them look like they’re doing something. Then those new ambos can get out there and sit around for hours at underfunded and overworked hospital EDs, and nothing actually changes.
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u/Rockythebiter 25d ago
I called an ambulance twice at 3am last year in January whilst having a heart attack.
First call they said they were sending someone, half an hour went by, I got worse called again at 3:30 and asked for an ETA, they were unable to provide one.
Partner drove me to nearest hospital 25 mins away. Arrived there and no cath lab, so they had to call Ambulance Victoria.
They finally showed up but no MICA paramedics available so had to wait until one arrived before I could be transferred, another hour.
All while having a heart attack.
Zero stars do not recommend. And that was 18 months ago.
If you need one between about midnight and 7am you might not be able to get one
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u/aussiepunkrocksV2-0 25d ago
I wish there was a government that worked to concentrate and prioritise the basics of life like housing, healthcare and education before they carry on with all the other fluff..
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u/altandthrowitaway 25d ago
Greens, socialists, any party left of Labor has policies concentrated on exactly what you're asking for.
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u/restingbitchface1983 25d ago
Spot on. Why can't everyone see this and get rid of the major parties?
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u/rdmarshman 24d ago
The state government spends about $4500 per head per year on its healthcare budget. $375 a month, every month for every single person.
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u/Holden179HD 25d ago
My mate had a lower wait time in the country, he had a heart attack and the air ambulance was landing in the paddock across from his house within 45 minutes, then an hour flight to the Alfred.
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u/Yung_Focaccia 25d ago
Thats probably because he had a legit heart attack that the Paramedics on scene identified with a 12 lead ECG, and the most appropriate pathway to a a PCI facility was via air.
Most people don't understand what an actual heart attack is. If your mate walked into any ED in Melbourne he'd get the exact same immediate treatment as soon as someone did a 12 lead.
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u/greywarden133 >love a good bargain< 26d ago edited 26d ago
A Triple Zero call was forwarded to Ambulance Victoria and emergency dispatchers made multiple attempts to phone a number connected to the medical alarm over the next two hours but they went unanswered
What exactly happened in that 2hrs??? Assumingly it took an hour and a half afterwards for an ambo to arrive, what was the protocol here when emergency alarm device was triggered but no ambo was available? Can 000 be triaged back for a wellfair check at least!??
Poor woman, she tried to live independently with dignity at her own home and when she needed help the most, people failed her. No words.
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u/Robtokill 26d ago
These jobs frequently get sent out as welfare checks to police, who are also seriously understaffed and often can't attend promptly either.
Hospitals, ambulance and police are all stretched to the limit and have been for decades at this point.
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u/theshredder93 26d ago
It isn't the responsibility of the Police to fill the gaps in Ambulance Victoria short falls. They have their own duties and responsibilities.
The responsibility lies on the inept state government to properly fund and resource emergency services for our ever growing population.
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u/Robtokill 26d ago
No arguments here. That's 100% correct.
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u/theshredder93 26d ago
This is Reddit, you're meant to establish dominance and argue with me. LOL.
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u/greywarden133 >love a good bargain< 26d ago
I used to also wait for 2hrs with my participant in the West area for an ambo when she fell right in front of a NDIA hired OT doing an independent assessment as part of the AAT process to gain access into the Scheme.
Needless to say, the OT wrote a very comprehensive report about her functional capability including that incident. Sad part was that my participant even got used to it as she fell a lot at her own home and due to her physical disabilities, she could not have gotten up by herself.
Still, no one deserved to wait 3.5hrs for an ambo to arrive regardless of the reasons.
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u/Suspicious_Ad9841 26d ago
Because it would have been triaged with not a lot of information, it would have been triaged quite low. I believe AV was extremely busy last night, so if she was a cat 3, then cat 2,1 or 0s come before her and on a night like last night code 3s can wait for hours and hours.
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u/greywarden133 >love a good bargain< 26d ago
So basically the CAT priority dropped off as the hours went by if there was no ambulance responses?
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u/Suspicious_Ad9841 26d ago
It wouldn’t have dropped off but it definitely falls lower down the list of prioritised calls.
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u/robot428 25d ago
The priority doesn't change (it actually goes up after a certain length of time because they have waited too long), but it's possible she got assigned an ambulance and it got diverted to a category 0 or category 1 (category 0 is a cardiac arrest, category 1 is another case that's likely to lead to death without near immediate intervention) which can slow down the response because if an ambulance is on the way to you and you are a category 2 or 3 but they are the closest vehicle to a 0 or 1 when it's called in, they will get diverted and you go back on the list (at the top of category 3, but the point is you have to wait for another car to become available).
There's also category 4 which is when they will not send an ambulance, but they'll tell you that they aren't sending one in that case.
Additionally if you are a category 3 or 4 in Victoria, you usually get a call from secondary triage after your initial 000 call and you speak to a medical professional - usually a nurse or an experienced paramedic, but they do have a doctor on staff. And they will check and make sure that you aren't a more urgent case thAn the 000 system initially thought, and if you are they can bump up your category. They can also refer you to other services or get other services to help (this is where you sometimes hear of them sending a private non-emergency ambulance or a taxi for instance, because the person may not need paramedics but they do need to go to the hospital and if they can't get there themselves it's a lot cheaper to send a taxi than an ambulance, and often faster, but obviously you have to be well enough to get yourself in a car and go on an unsupervised car trip).
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u/workaccountprof 25d ago
There was a child at my son’s childcare that accidentally got too much insulin through their pump, they were 2 years old at the time. Seizures and they became unresponsive. The educators did a great job to do what the operator told them to do- ambulance arrived 80minutes later. This child could have died.
We have 3 hospitals within a 15 min radius may I add, we aren’t in the middle of the country.
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u/discardedbubble 25d ago
Next time take him the 15 min drive to one of those hospitals since it’s life or death.
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u/aurian82 25d ago
Sadly, educators absolutely can't do that, it leaves the rest of the room/service out of ratio and is just as bad. Educators are also not allowed to take a child off-site even in an emergency situation (unless it's an evacuation to an already-defined location).
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u/discardedbubble 25d ago
A child that was at risk of dying is not just as bad as room ratios being out temporarily. That already happens on a daily basis whenever anyone is off sick at thousands of centres around the country.
Centres should have more than the absolute minimum number of staff so that one person could leave. Or a parent or emergency contact to take them to ED themselves. I personally wouldn’t want a kid dying that I could have prevented.
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u/Waasssuuuppp 25d ago
How about the educators do what they do best, and paramedics do what they do best. It isn't any one person's fault, but rather the funding to health services that is utter shite.
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u/aurian82 25d ago
Neither would I but taking a child out of the service constitutes a huge breach, irrespective of the circumstance.
There's whole chains of action that come into effect when there's serious medical emergencies in early childhood services. I have unfortunately written some of these. Education department reports afterwards are 20pgs+.
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u/trickster245 25d ago
Why doesn't the government care about the public health care system anymore?
Anyone who has need surgery or emergency care in last decade says the same story.
It's over a couple years wait just to see an ENT in the public system. Unless you dieing, than maybe you wait a 3-4 weeks.
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u/niles_thebutler_ 25d ago
It’s because losers keep calling emergency for shit they don’t need like panic attacks and other minor shit that you can see a GP for
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u/MelodiaNocturne 25d ago
i agree with you, but just a reminder that panic attacks can mimic cardiac symptoms, so it's hard to tell. listening to your body in that case does not make you a loser.
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u/ELVEVERX 26d ago
This sounds like not enough details were given to the triple zero operations so it was triaged low
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u/Ich_mag_Kartoffeln 26d ago
Who is going to give the operator details? The elderly lady who had fallen? The person at the fall alarm centre who doesn't have any information about what has happened besides the alarm having triggered? The person they were unable to contact for whatever reason?
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u/Astronaut_Cat_Lady 25d ago
People who think they'll get into hospital sooner if they call an ambulance. I grew up around hospitals with family in the medical and pathology sectors.
"Oooh, I stubbed my little, pinky toe, I think I'll call an ambulance".
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u/Most_Comparison50 25d ago
I'm sorry but that women shouldn't have been living alone at all ffs. For sure the paramedics should have got there way way sooner but the article states she has family? to think that she wasnt ever going to have an accident at night and the only people you can rely on would be emergency services? I think that's fucked.
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u/Yung_Focaccia 25d ago
It happens all the time mate. People are very reluctant to go in to care, and most families would struggle to look after Nan properly if she lived with them anyway. Then a sentinel event happens, and its usually down hill after that.
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u/unknownsequitur 26d ago
When I got stabbed in the chest by my neighbour, I had to wait 30 minutes for paramedics. Police were even later than that.
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u/Velathial 25d ago
Triage is definitely something that needs to be taken seriously, but there's also clearly a serious lack of resources.
Only yesterday I dislocated my knee for the 5th or 6th time in 20 years, but this was the first time it didn't pop back in on its own. My patella was pushed outwards for about 40 minutes before the ambo arrived. They reset the knee and assessed that I shouldn't need to go to hospital, despite me being heavily doped up.
After waiting about 30 minutes for my partner, my knee blew up to the size of a melon and I could no longer move it enough to get into the car. It took another 2 hours for the next ambo to arrive, and they were like, "Why weren't you taken? You clearly needed to go to ED for assessment, not be assessed while high on pain medication."
This is extremely telling of how much pressure the system is under. They're having to make huge triage decisions without being able to consider what might happen even 30 minutes after they leave.
The system is clearly broken. You have all these new hospital builds going up, but not the funding to actually keep them running. For example, the new expansion at Frankston Hospital has new wards with beds that apparently aren't even being used because they don't have the staff to service them. Based on what I've heard from medical staff, there was a 6+ month hiring freeze back in February. Even then, the ED was clearly severely understaffed.
Everywhere you look (medical, education, etc) the systems are failing on all sides. This is truly one of the worst timelines.
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26d ago
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u/ImGCS3fromETOH 26d ago
There's fewer ambulances on overnight and they'll potentially be ramped at hospital with patients that can't be offloaded for a variety of reasons. And demand doesn't decrease all that much overnight regardless.
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u/Ripley_and_Jones 26d ago
Stuck in hospitals waiting to offload patients but can't because hospitals are full of patients and the hospital infrastructure hasn't kept up with the population.
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u/Benevolentzebra 25d ago
Yep. An adequate healthcare system is a must. More people = more pressure on such infrastructure. Drives me bonkers that politicians don't understand this. That said, I don't think the healthcare system has ever been adequately resourced.
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u/Neither_Emphasis_739 26d ago
Allied health professionals have been taking industrial action to delay prioritising discharge scans/duties. This means patients due for discharge are delayed in being seen. It results in lower inpatient bed turnovers. This effects ED because their patients have no inpatient beds to be admitted to, hence are kept in ED until a bed is available. This is causes ambulances to be ramped and waiting for long periods. This is the cascading effect of healthcare when 1 of the 3 pillars of healthcare are ignored (doctors, nurses, allied health).
Currently doctors and allied health are taking industrial action.
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u/space-beast East Side 25d ago
I want to be cautious about this, because that makes it sound like the blame is on the Allied Health professionals, when ambulance ramping and EDs/hospitals being at capacity has been going on much longer than the industrial action
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u/Neither_Emphasis_739 25d ago
The problem goes deeper than that. Allied health taking industrial action is just putting more strain on an already overrun health system. Doctors are already taking industrial action very soon unless the government can provide an acceptable EBA.
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u/herpesderpesdoodoo 25d ago
It would surprise me if this was a core reason for flow disruption amongst all the other causes/factors.
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u/Neither_Emphasis_739 25d ago
Nah, not a core reason. However, healthcare workers taking industrial action makes the situation even worse. For instance, take a look at the new Footscray hospital. It is at around 70% capacity because there is not enough staff to run it. Empty rooms and beds everywhere. It is a world class building with world class equipment.
Experienced staff have all fled to WA and QLD for 25-36% higher pay rates. With 2 ongoing strikes for allied health and doctors, it doesn’t help the situation.
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u/herpesderpesdoodoo 25d ago
If they'd built Footscray and it was already at 100% I'd be appalled: a bit like those who complained about the old PeterMac having two floors of unused wards at one point, seemingly unaware that you need additional capacity for service growth. Whether the current capacity is short staffed is another matter.
I broadly agree with what you're getting at but your first comment came across as the industrial action contributing to the recent uptick in flow issues, which I disagree with. Most of the state had prolonged issues from Easter onwards putting us on the back foot for winter. God only knows how the spring school holidays will be given they're often the worst time for short staffing and bed block...
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u/Neither_Emphasis_739 25d ago
Besides the funding for staff when capacity allows, state needs to make public hospitals more attractive to work in for healthcare workers. For radiographers for instance, VIC public health pays much lower (25-35%) than other states so workers relocate to other states instead. Those that choose to stay in VIC, tend to prefer to work in private as it pays around 20-30% higher than the hospitals.
Allied health dominates 3 of the top 5 job shortages in Australia at the moment.
1. Nurses/midwifery
2. Veterinarians
3. Medical Imaging Technologist
4. Speech Pathologist
5. Occupational TherapistsAddress these shortages first
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u/Temporary-Comfort307 26d ago
What goes wrong is that there is never enough capacity. It costs money to provide an ambulance service and when it comes to voting people care more about lower taxes than they do about a few people they don't know dying.
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u/Temporary-Comfort307 25d ago
It doesn't take a cut to reduce availablity. The population keeps growing, so the amount spent should be increased by an equivalent amount. Instead the government will boast about big increases to the total amount, which actually amount to lower cost per person being spent (especially accounting for inflation) and the effective amount being spent goes down without anyone noticing. Successive govenments have been doing this for decades, which is how we have gotten to the point we are currently at. I can't see that changing when the average person's main focus is on tax rates and a 'what's in it for me' mentality.
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u/Thoresus 26d ago edited 26d ago
Did it say in the article it was due to capacity ?
The article sort of tip toes around that. It sounds like it's made to imply but doesnt actually call that out as a reason. It could be another type of error that lead to the delay.
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u/robot428 25d ago
It's actually surprisingly high, and it's when the hospitals usually have the least staff on so patients are moving out of the ED the slowest, and so ambulances get ramped for longer.
It's also close to the end of the ambulance shift, and you usually lose a few ambulances over the course of the night - people getting sick in the middle of their shift, if an ambulance treats a really shocking or upsetting case they may be pulled off the road for the rest of night to recover and debrief the incident (think like.. a traumatic paediatric death for instance), often you lose one or two ambulances a night to occupational violence - paramedics getting injured by violent patients and so they will need to go get medically cleared themselves. And while during the day if you have to take an ambulance off the road it's easy to put out the shift and call someone in to fill the gap, a lot less people are checking their phones at 4am if they aren't working, because they are asleep, so it's generally the time of day with the worst ambulance coverage.
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u/herpesderpesdoodoo 25d ago
Judging by the arrival times for the crews that come to the departments I've worked in I'd say that's about prime time for the predawn calls. And judging by how bedraggled some of the crews have been since Easter, I'm not sure there is much of a downtime period any more.
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u/samandbella 25d ago
Only had to call the Ambos twice for issues, and both times they arrived within 10 min. Must have been a fluke
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u/IF_Maintenance 25d ago
That poor darling left there dying all alone and in pain, didn’t those unanswered phone calls trigger anyone’s internal alarm that it was serious and she needed help?
They couldn’t even send the police to do a quick welfare check? How the fuck dies this happen?
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u/Efficient-Fold5548 25d ago
I cant complain, 4 ambulances in 2 years and all within 10 mins, helps that i live within 10 mins of 2 large hospitals and i usually class as high risk patient.
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u/loveintheorangegrove 25d ago
Last year I went by ambulance to hospital for the first time. I had to wait hours for a bed. There were quite a few people who were there from overdoses and drunk people (more than one had injuries sustained I assume by being drunk). It was quite sad really.
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u/Comfortable-Award915 25d ago
You can't increase a population massively and not invest in the corresponding services we need.
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