Canberra Hospital sets new daily record of emergency department presentations amid surging demand
The ACT Health app showed the wait time at Canberra Hospital last night at around 8pm was nine hours and 13 minutes, with 54 patients in line.
Dr Shakeeb Bani-Yaseen, the clinical director of Canberra Health Services' medical division, said wait times of that length are "definitely not normal".
"We haven't seen this number in a very, very long time," Dr Bani-Yaseen said.
However, he said the wait time was not as straightforward as it appeared.
"My understanding of those numbers is they do not reflect the wait time, they reflect the total time it takes to see a nurse, get triaged, see a doctor, have some blood tests, have the results, then get seen by the referral team," he said.
"It's a treatment time as opposed to the wait time.
Dr Bani-Yaseen said July 16 marked the highest number of presentations to Canberra Hospital's emergency department on record.
"We saw 356 patients that day, which is a number we've not seen before," he said.
"Over the last six months, we've seen the highest numbers of presentations — we're averaging at about 320 patients per day over the seven days.
"The flu season has definitely played a major role in this."
Flu season aside, Dr Bani-Yaseen said he'd witnessed a slow but significant increase in the number of patients relying on Canberra's public health system in the past few years.
"We see just under 1,000 patients between Canberra Hospital, North Canberra Hospital and the walk-in centres every 24 hours," Dr Bani-Yaseen said.
"I've been at Canberran Hospital on-and-off for the past ten years and I remember in 2018 and 2019, 250 patients per day was a busy day.
"Now, we see 320 patients and we go, 'Today wasn't too bad'.
"That's due to there being a lot of complex medical issues and the increased population both in Canberra and the surrounding regions."
Vice president of the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association Paul Haines said patients from his state were unfairly adding to the ACT public health system's burden.
"The truth is because the ACT government invests more heavily in health than the NSW government, the ACT's health services are better than the NSW health services," Mr Haines, who works at Yass Hospital, said.
"So, a lot of our patients actually like to go into the ACT health system because they know they're going to get a better service.
"And our doctors also prefer to send our patients into the ACT health system for the very same reason."
Mr Haines said that Goulburn Base Hospital redirecting patients into the ACT could also be adding to the problem.
"Unfortunately, we do find that Goulburn Hospital is very, very busy and often because they have such little capacity, they do provide us with more resistance than they should do," he said.
"So, Goulburn Hospital is a referral hospital for all of the smaller hospitals in the southern local health district but we're finding that because they're so busy, they often request that we refer our patients into Canberra.
"And there's actually no governance to say whether that's appropriate or not, but if we can't get our doctors at Goulburn to accept our patients, we don't have a choice."
Another challenge, according to Mr Haines, was returning NSW patients to their local hospital after their initial treatment in Canberra.
"What this does is put more pressure on the ACT health system, which obviously impacts the patients in the ACT that require those beds and those services."
In a statement, a spokesperson for NSW Health Minister Ryan Park said the Southern NSW Local Health District had local arrangements in place to enable inter-hospital transfers when required with the ACT.
"Transfer decisions are dependent on a number of factors, but the clinical situation and needs of the patient and their family are paramount," the spokesperson said.
ACT Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith wouldn't go as far as to say Canberra's public health system was buckling under the burden of NSW patients, which make up 25 per cent of presentations on average.
She did, however, concede the price the NSW government paid per patient was insufficient.
"When NSW pays us to take their patients, they're paying us at the National Efficient Price and we can't deliver services at that price," she said.
"Like other small jurisdictions, we do face higher costs, where we have fixed costs that are spread across a smaller number of hospitals and patients.
"So, we've been arguing in the context of the National Health Reform Agreement negotiations, that small jurisdictions should get a premium on the National Efficient Price that reflects the higher costs that they have to pay."
The National Efficient Price is set annually by the Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority, and is based on the average national cost of an average patient's visit to a public hospital.
Minister Stephen-Smith also said it was about time the NSW government chipped-in for hospital infrastructure in the ACT.
"We've delivered a new critical services building at Canberra Hospital — a $660 million project — and we're developing a more than $1 billion new Northside Hospital and NSW contributes nothing towards the capital costs of that infrastructure that serves the whole of southern NSW," she said.
"So, we would like capital costs to be included somehow in the contribution NSW makes."
Canberra Liberals Leader Leanne Castley said she was quite disappointed to see the recent wait time figures.
"It is the middle of winter, [so] sure, we should expect a little bit of a surge," Ms Castley said.
"[Canberrans] deserve so much better. They deserve nation-leading healthcare."
She repeated calls for a royal commission into the ACT's public health system.
"None of the internal reviews or culture surveys and tweaks here and there seem to be making any difference on the ground for local Canberrans," Ms Castley said.
"And until we get in and have a look, take the lid off and have a look from the top down, I really do believe that we won't see much more change."
She said the issue spoke to the ACT government's apparent lack of a long-term strategy for the public health sector.
"Because of that the minister needs to have that long-term strategy in order to see Canberrans when they need to be seen."
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