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Bed demand hurts hospitals

Life in ED at Royal Perth Hospital. Dr Harry Patterson. Pic Michael O'Brien - The West Australian - 14th March 2011 - FAIRFAX ONLINE and FIN REVIEW OUT

Growing demand for beds to treat infectious and mentally ill patients is adding to pressures in Perth emergency departments, senior doctors have warned.

The heads of emergency at Royal Perth, Sir Charles Gairdner, Fremantle and Princess Margaret hospitals say despite improvements in access block - where patients wait too long in emergency to be discharged or admitted - there are often not enough beds for some specialties.

Writing in the Australian Medical Association's magazine Medicus, PMH's emergency head Meredith Borland said increased demand for isolation beds on the wards was an issue.

And as staff waited to move into the new children's hospital, a lack of space at PMH meant some patients with minor complaints had to be seen on chairs in corridors at peak times.

RPH emergency head Harry Patterson said that because his department was small, patients needed to get into wards as quickly as possible but sometimes there were no suitable beds.

"Patients have infectious disease issues which limits where they can go," Dr Patterson said.

Fremantle Hospital emergency head Ian Dey said overcrowding in his department was on the rise again.

"The biggest hindrances to moving patients out of the ED are access to inpatient beds, timely access to certain inpatient specialties and access to single rooms where required for infection control or other reasons," Dr Dey said.

Dave Mountain, the Australian Medical Association WA's emergency medicine spokesman and until last month the head of Sir Charles Gairdner's emergency department, said the doctors' comments acknowledged significant improvements in emergency departments "but things were certainly not sorted".

"Pressure on emergency departments is increasing, and patients are getting sicker, older and bigger, taking more drugs and getting admitted more often," Dr Mountain said.

He said there was a lack of appropriately staffed beds for psychiatric patients, and the State was "horribly underdone" in the number of publicly employed psychiatrists.