Cover-up claim on ‘environment of chaos’

So, it not just the US with these problems: The Courier-Mail: Cover-up claim on ‘environment of chaos’ [10aug05].

HOSPITAL emergency departments across Queensland are in meltdown as patients queue on trolleys for beds and staff flee intolerable working conditions.

In a scathing submission to the health inquiry, eight emergency department directors and specialists from major hospitals claim the chronic problems are being deliberately concealed from the public.

The 11-page Australasian College for Emergency Medicine submission accuses Queensland Health and politicians of having "lied to the public with either fabricated figures on the number of beds" or for making claims that there was no intensive care crisis.

The college tells the health inquiry this is "complete rubbish" and emergency departments have become dumping grounds for the failures of the health system.

A lack of beds and a failure to attract staff to emergency departments fuelled the crisis in emergency departments, the college writes.

And patients were not being treated with dignity and respect.

Instead, they were being squeezed into emergency department corridors, examined in public and some were being forced to wait a day, sometimes more, on a trolley for an available inpatient bed.

"It is an environment of chaos, pressure and the ever-occurring requirement to cut corners using only your experience in a resource-poor environment," the college submission said.

I still don’t understand why it’s acceptable to put any patient in a hallway, when there are literally hundreds of offices in the hospital that could be put to that use.  Perhaps if the administration had to work in the hallway ED expansion and efficiency would be a higher priority.