Overcrowded hospitals in broken system

Transcript: AMA Queensland President Dr Maria Boulton, 4BC, Summer Mornings with Peter Fegan, Thursday 5 January 2023

Subject:   Queensland hospital performance

PETER FEGAN:   Dr Maria Boulton is the AMA Queensland President and a good friend of the show. Doctor, good morning.

DR MARIA BOULTON:   Good morning, Peter.

PETER FEGAN:   I would like to get your thoughts on this. If you have a look through the list, and I was just going through them then - Sunshine Coast Hospital, intensive performance support. Metro South, which is Logan, intensive performance support, that's for the health system. Mackay Base Hospital's the same.

You've got plenty on performance support, which are mediocre. The Children's Health Queensland is on performance support. Central Queensland, performance support. Central West, performance support, so these are all mediocre. Does this surprise you?

DR MARIA BOULTON:   No, no, it doesn't, and we know that there's been issues with various hospitals throughout the year. For example, we know what's been happening in Mackay. We also know that in Metro South, there are issues with the transfers from Redlands through to the larger tertiary hospitals. We also know that Central Queensland has a maternity services crisis, so this is not a surprise to us.

I guess what this looks at, it looks at different things like accreditation status, different KPIs. Also, the business side of running the Hospital and Health Service (HHS), and many, many different things. It's not a reflection on the brilliant healthcare workers who work day in, day out at those hospitals, who are doing the best they can in a system that is broken and a system that is underfunded and under-supported. I, for one, would like to know what ‘performance support’ means. What does that actually mean?

PETER FEGAN:   Why can't they just be normal? People understand excellent, good, unsatisfactory, or poor. That's what we do in schools, it's what we do in universities. Why can't we just have a simpler system?

DR MARIA BOULTON:   Yeah, look, you're right, and a simpler system would make more sense to us, but as I said, this is not a surprise to us. We know that we're in urgent need of more funding, both from the State and the Commonwealth. We know that we need more strong and effective leadership, and we also know that we need to change things around to innovate.

The way that our hospitals are going, they're overcrowded. There's ambulance ramping. We know that the list for elective surgeries is growing and growing, but we know that there's actual suffering as well. There's a lot of pregnant women in Central Queensland who, at the moment, don't have any certainty as to where they will deliver their baby.

PETER FEGAN:   This is not just a State Government issue, we know that. This is the Federal Government as well. Both are just as responsible as each other. I remember, Dr Maria Boulton, during the election campaign, and I was following Albo for a little bit around Brisbane, and I put a question to him and it was in relation to health and it was when Annastacia Palaszczuk said that these are the things that we want from the Federal Government, and one of them was health. That's not been delivered. Is there any surprises that that's the case?

DR MARIA BOULTON:   Yeah, it hasn't been delivered. We’re asking for an extra 5 per cent in funding from the Commonwealth Government. We had some extra funding for COVID. That funding was due to finish on the 31st of December, and we know that COVID is still in Queensland, so it makes no sense to pull that funding.

But we also know that our hospitals were in crisis before COVID, and that's why it's essential that the Commonwealth Government respond to the AMA's call and increase funding immediately.

PETER FEGAN:   Have you been talking to the government, and also can you relay any of the horror stories, or an example of what you're seeing in the hospitals that maybe a nurse or a doctor is reporting back to you?

DR MARIA BOULTON:   Yeah, so I saw this firsthand. I visited a large hospital in South-East Queensland. I haven't actually worked in an emergency department for about 20 years. So it was quite shocking to me to see that there were trolleys with patients all through the corridor. There were paramedics waiting alongside those trolleys, paramedics who should be out there helping people that need them. Also, there were ambulances ramped. There were also people in tents outside the hospital, waiting for hospital beds.

There were elderly patients who had issues such as stroke, heart attacks, had been there for longer than 24 hours, in an emergency department, waiting for a hospital bed.

There's also reports of people who are working in the smaller peripheral hospitals, who are having real issues transferring their patients from their hospital where they may not have the full service to those hospitals that do, and then those patients are stuck in their emergency departments.

We also visited Rockhampton and Gladstone. We spoke to patients who had to deliver a baby, after the Gladstone maternity bypass, and they were in tears. Their experience was not good, and it makes no sense, given the population in Central Queensland, that these services aren't available for those women.

PETER FEGAN:   Before I let you go, Dr Maria Boulton, I just wanted to ask you one more thing about COVID and the excuses we've been given or fed by government, not just State Government, Federal Government as well. COVID's no longer an excuse, is it? We need to move past it. These issues were in place well before COVID. They were in place when the LNP was in government here as well. It's not just the Labor Government. There were issues when Campbell Newman was Premier.

DR MARIA BOULTON:   Yeah, these are not new issues, and in fact, our Ramping Roundtable prior to the COVID wave last year recommended that hospitals function at less than 90 per cent capacity to leave room for surges by COVID, but also to ensure that patients are moving through the hospital system rapidly and quickly.

The other thing is that we know that for decades, general practice funding has been neglected by the Commonwealth Government, and this is the end result. After years of neglect, this is where we're at, and now it's patients that are suffering.

PETER FEGAN:   Dr Maria Boulton, keep up the fight. You do great work at AMA Queensland. Well done and happy new year, and we will talk, I'm sure we will talk plenty through 2023.

DR MARIA BOULTON:   Thank you. Happy new year to you too.