Wollongong MP Paul Scully says he has been receiving a large influx of complaints about excessive wait times at Wollongong Hospital, and has written to NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard to raise his concerns.
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Mr Scully said the complaints had spiked in the past six to seven weeks, and included some patients who had been left waiting up to 24 hours before they were admitted to hospital.
"I thought for a little while it might have been a pressure borne out of staff absences due to COVID, but it's now getting far too consistent," he said.
Mr Scully said he had written to Mr Hazzard to highlight that the pressures on the health system were not just due to the pandemic.
"COVID might have explained some of this, but we now have consistently higher presentations than a few years ago at the ED, and one in two people not leaving in the benchmarked time of four hours," he said.
"I was up there on a Monday night recently, at 9.30pm, with someone who had waited several hours to be seen and was then going to wait another four or five hours for some blood work, and then another few hours for results.
"I was genuinely surprised by how many people were there, that late on a Monday evening, and you could see that the staff were just not stopping to try and get people seen to, but the demand was just too high."
Over the past three months - amid nurses strikes and pleas from health workers for the government to do something about chronic understaffing - many Mercury readers have told similar stories.
This week, dozens of people took to social media to share their experiences, in response to a story about delays for paramedics waiting with patients at Wollongong ED.
For instance, Michael Oliveira said his father had been transported to hospital at 4am on a Sunday a few weeks back and didn't get a bed till Tuesday morning.
Reader Rach Naree said she had to wait 17 hours to see someone for mental health, while Alyn Vincent said he waited three hours for an ambulance.
"Then, after my wife drove me to hospital, spent ten hours in the emergency department," Mr Vincent wrote.
"It was only when I vomited all over the floor I was seen by a doctor."
Asked this week about the delays faced by paramedics at Wollongong Hospital emergency department, the Illawarra Shoalhaven Health District referred the Mercury to previous advice it gave in late March.
Then, district chief Margot Mains said there had been "sustained high demand for emergency care and hospital admissions, along with considerable staff unavailability due to COVID-19 exposures."
She said Wollongong hospital was being particularly impacted, but that patients were always triaged and seen according to the clinical urgency of their condition.
"During busy times, those with less urgent conditions will experience longer wait times when there are high numbers of seriously unwell patients being prioritised for emergency care," Ms Mains said.
"At triage, where possible, the nurse may provide patients with an estimated wait time to be seen by a doctor. Patients with minor injuries or minor illnesses are encouraged to seek care at a medical centre or GP rather than wait in the ED."
Mr Scully said he wanted the government to outline a clearer timeline on when work would start on the new Shellharbour Hospital, as well as increasing the operational resources for the whole Illawarra health district.
He also said he believed staff and resources allocations were not keeping up with what was needed given the growing population and increasing presentations, and has called on the government to look at short term measures to alleviate the pressure.
Ms Mains said the Illawarra Shoalhaven health district was continuing to develop comprehensive and around-the-clock strategies to manage periods of significant demand.
She said the district was increasing bed capacity at Wollongong Hospital, where possible, and ensuring that all available clinical staff are deployed to frontline care areas with the highest demand.
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Kate McIlwain
For more than a decade, I've helped the Illawarra Mercury set the news agenda across the region. Currently I'm the paper's health reporter - covering the stories of Illawarra workers and residents in the wake of a global pandemic and at a time where our health systems are stretched to the limit.
For more than a decade, I've helped the Illawarra Mercury set the news agenda across the region. Currently I'm the paper's health reporter - covering the stories of Illawarra workers and residents in the wake of a global pandemic and at a time where our health systems are stretched to the limit.
