SOUTH Australia’s winter of medical discontent — chronic hospital overcrowding, ambulance ramping, record presentations and a horror flu season — actually saw the average time spent by patients in emergency departments cut by about half an hour.
Figures out today also show the public took heed of an advertising campaign urging them to go to GPs and pharmacists, or even just stay in bed, for minor ailments rather than clogging EDs.
While the number of presentations to metropolitan EDs in June-September jumped by about 1000 to 96,323, the average time spent by patients fell from 5.31 hours to 5.05 hours.
As well as work by doctors, nurses, ambulance officers and other hospital staff, the figures indicate emergency plans to ease the load worked.
This included the Winter Demand Management Plan enacted on August 4 which saw 119 non-urgent elective surgeries postponed and 34 patients transferred from metropolitan hospitals to country hospitals to recuperate.
As well, the advertising campaign ‘Emergency Departments are for Emergencies’, was rolled out, which saw visits to EDs for relatively low-level conditions drop by more than 2000 visits over winter.
The face of that campaign, Dr Hendrika Meyer, head of Critical Care and Emergency Services at the Lyell McEwin and Modbury hospitals, said the focus was to encourage people who didn’t require urgent medical assistance to consider alternatives to EDs.
“The message to the community was that people should see their GP early in their illness rather than waiting until they become really unwell, and go to an ED only when it’s an emergency,” Dr Meyer said.
“While the campaign was active, statistics show the number of category four and five patients, those assessed as having lower acuity, reduced by around six per cent when compared to the previous winter.”
Health Minister Jack Snelling praised health staff for their dedication.
“Between July and September there were nearly a thousand more presentations to our EDs than ever before, in part due to the record number of flu cases in our community,” he said.
“Despite this, our hospital staff performed exceptionally well in providing safe and efficient care to patients, who spent on average 26 minutes less in our EDs than during winter 2014.
“I want to thank our doctors, nurses and allied professional staff for the expertise, care and compassion they demonstrated in demanding circumstances.
“The improvement in the time patients spent in the emergency department also reinforces what our doctors have been telling us — that there are opportunities to improve our health system and help patients get admitted to hospital or safely returned home sooner than before.
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