More than 100 people left Northern Hospital’s emergency department last week before being seen by medical staff, according to a leaked internal email.
The Victorian branch secretary of the Nursing and Midwifery Federation, Lisa Fitzpatrick, said the email to hospital staff showed the hospital couldn’t cope with demand.
“The number of patients requiring admission is causing extreme delays in the emergency department,” Ms Fitzpatrick said.
“The crux of the matter is we need more acute beds.”
She said there were 42 cubicles in the hospital’s emergency department. But Northern Health reassigned some of these cubicles for patients waiting to be admitted, creating a backlog and ambulance ramping.
The purpose of the internal email was to alert staff to changes designed to allow patients to be seen more quickly.
“We had 105 patients leave without been seen this week alone and things cannot continue as they are,” the email said.
According to Ms Fitzpatrick, the email was referring to the week beginning September 22.
“But it wasn’t just about that week, it’s an ongoing problem,” she said. “These patients left because they couldn’t wait any longer.”
She said the issue at the Epping hospital was indicative of a statewide problem, but one that was particularly acute in Melbourne’s growth corridors.
Northern Health spokeswoman Emma Woodall, said the hospital had made changes to improve performance in its emergency department, and they had resulted in notable improvements.
“Recent improvements resulted in only seven people leaving the emergency department yesterday,” she said.
“These patients are typically category 4 or 5 and can be treated by their GPs.”
The Northern Hospital’s emergency department is one of the busiest in the state.
It experienced a 5 per cent increase in patient presentations in September.
