ST JOHN OF GOD MIDLAND
PUBLIC HOSPITAL — AMBULATORY EMERGENCY CARE UNIT
702. MR S.J. PRICE to the Minister for Health:
I refer to the McGowan Labor
government's record investment in our health system. Can the minister
update the house on how the new emergency care unit at St John of God Midland
Public Hospital will help avoid unnecessary hospital admissions and reduce wait
times, and can the minister outline to the house how this new unit builds on
the other measures being taken by this government to improve access to
emergency care in our hospitals?
Ms A.
SANDERSON replied:
I thank the member for Forrestfield
for his question.
I was delighted to go to Midland
Public Hospital last week to open its new emergency care unit, the ambulatory
emergency care unit. It had been due to open a couple of years ago but COVID
took over and the hospital needed that space for the COVID clinic, so the
opening is later than we would have liked. The great thing about this unit is
that it was driven by the staff, the emergency consultants and the nursing and
allied health staff. It was developed directly
to respond to that community. It is a local solution that has been supported by
the government. We provided $3.4 million
worth of funding to help establish the unit and to fit it out and staff it.
Essentially, it is for those patients who
present at the emergency department who need access to a specialist but do not
necessarily need to be in hospital overnight. They need to come in for
tests and a whole range of things. Normally, they would be admitted while they waited to see a specialist or to have those
tests done, and therefore they would take up a hospital bed that could
be used for people who needed absolute emergency care. The patients can go
through the emergency department lists and be pulled off the list to be seen in
this unit. The patients get access to a rapid wraparound specialist service
from an emergency physician. They have their pain and symptoms managed and get
the scans and tests they need. If a patient is able to go home and see a specialist
the next day, an urgent appointment with a specialist will be made for the next
day. It is essentially access to urgent outpatient care with a specialist
whilst managing symptoms and pain, and avoiding hospital admissions. That is
exactly what people want. They do not want to be in hospital if they do not have to be. This avoids hospital
admissions and long wait times to see a specialist. Sometimes specialists
will not get to see their patients until the afternoon the next day and the
patients could have been waiting at home. Under this initiative, patients are
sometimes required to come back the next day.
This initiative is supported by
doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, the geriatric emergency
department team and the Red Hot Foot podiatry team, because feet emergencies
are often the most significant issues that our older people face. This is a contemporary
model of care that is being used in a range of settings around our state and
also around the country. It is meeting the changing needs of the community,
which is an older, ageing population who need access to urgent specialist care
but do not necessarily need to be in a hospital bed. This initiative will help
ease bed pressure at Midland Public Hospital and is supported by range of other
activities like freeing up beds for people who are medically fit for discharge,
the mandatory discharge policy, the transition fund for the provision of beds
for aged-care providers, respite services, and the whole multisystem approach
for tackling the challenges of emergency access care. I want to give a special
shout-out to the physicians on the ground who drove this project. It was their idea and we backed them. They
understand the community they support and treat, and they have already
diverted significant numbers from the emergency department.