More than a quarter of all beds available to emergency department patients at Wollongong Hospital are blocked by patients who shouldn't be there, the NSW Health Minister has told Parliament.
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Caused by a severe shortage of aged care places in the region, nurses say the bed block situation is wreaking havoc on the emergency department.
In Budget Estimates, Brad Hazzard highlighted the region's disproportionate problem with blocked beds, which are taken up by patients ready to leave the hospital for aged or disability care, but who have nowhere to go.
"The Wollongong Hospital has 550 beds total; 375 of those are accessible through the ED, so they're not in a special care nursery or ICU coming out of the theatres," Mr Hazzard said.
"Of those, just a few weeks ago when I was speaking to the local management, 100 of 375 beds were blocked by people who shouldn't be there."
Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District chief Margot Mains has told the Mercury there were 104 aged care patients waiting to be discharged.
NSW Health secretary Susan Pearce also noted the region was facing a particularly bad shortage of beds. She highlighted that, statewide, there was the equivalent of an entire hospital of aged care and NDIS patients beyond their expected date of discharge.
About one sixth of these patients are in Wollongong.
"The problem certainly affects all of our hospitals," Ms Pearce said. "It in particular is affecting the Illawarra-Shoalhaven area."
"There have been some issues in the Illawarra with respect to nursing home bed provision."
She noted aged-care facilities had "suffered and struggled the same workforce challenges that the public health system have in terms of staff furloughing and so on, staff fatigue".
The local health district has repeatedly outlined that the shortage of aged care beds is one of the main reasons for long waits in the Wollongong emergency department.
At this month's nurses strike, a nurse spoke in detail about what it's like for ED staff and patients with the hospital wards so full that people cannot get beds in the wards.
"[We are] regularly abused by patients and relatives due to ridiculously long wait times," the ED nurse said.
"And you know what, I'd be furious too if my elderly family member spent over 24 hours sitting in a chair in a waiting room.
"It's ridiculous, they're in a reclining chair, it's not good enough. We have patients, and often elderly people, waiting three days in the department for a ward bed.
"In recent weeks we have had on most days, around 30 admitted patients sitting in the ED waiting for a ward. Their care is suffering, the emergency department is not designed to hold admitted patients for that amount of time."
"We literally only have about three showers in the department. How can 35 patients waiting for ward beds, often in the waiting room, receive the care they deserve when we are still having the same number of ED presentation needing immediate attention, while holding all of these admitted patients."
She said the ED was a busy, noisy place, where the lights stayed on all night, with some elderly patients "spending hours on ambulance stretchers risking pressure injuries, and their conditions are deteriorating while they are not receiving the care they came to hospital for".
"How can one nurse be responsible for sometimes up to 20 or 30 patients in the waiting room, as is the case often in our department," she said.
"It is just downright unsafe and dangerous. It's dangerous for our patients, it's dangerous for our registration and it's dangerous for our livelihoods."
In Budget Estimates, Mr Hazzard agreed that the blocked beds were creating an adverse environment for patients stuck in wards as well.
"It's not really fair. I mean, if it were our grandmother, or grandfather, or mother or father, to be sitting in a clinical environment because there's no place to go," he said.
"People want to be in a home environment. They want to be where their family can be around them."
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