THE Royal Adelaide Hospital’s Emergency Department was nearing double capacity on Sunday night when officials blocked new arrivals under a six-week old pilot plan to deal with demand far exceeding bed space. The Australasian College for Emergency Medicine says its members were faced with 92 patients in an ED with a capacity for 59 when the RAH decided to use its new plan to “stagger” arrivals by leaving them in ambulances in the carpark. The College rejects suggestions by the ambulance union the ED doors were barricaded and says patients requiring immediate treatment, including a burns injury, were immediately brought into the ED. “Ambulance ramping and emergency department overcrowding are symptoms of multiple issues of patient flow within a hospital and beyond,” collage chair Dr Tom Soulsby said. “They are serious issues which the SA ACEM Faculty has frequently spoken about and which require hospital-wide reform, clinical leadership and infrastructure changes in order to be dealt with properly.”
Home Health Facility Hospital RAH Emergency Department was nearing double capacity on Sunday night when officials...