Casualty is the Blockage in Healthcare

In my day job, taxi driving, I came upon a customer who called for an ambulance and was told if he wants urgent treatment then he should hang up and call a taxi as the wait for an ambulance is extremely long,

This is an Appalling Situation

Where are the real problems that cause this Appalling Situation!

This problem is years in the making and it is clear that the Casualty Departments are the direct cause of the unavailability of urgent transport via an ambulance in NSW, and most probably in every other state as well. Many ambulances are parked outside of casualty departments waiting to unload their customer who is needing urgent medical treatment, yet the Casualty Department cannot receive these patients that need urgent treatment since they do not have the staff, the beds, doctors, nurses and space. While I contend the problem is the Casualty Department, the problem, yet the staff are mostly educated and very hard-working people who need more support by virtually doubling the numbers at an initial stage,

In spite of the increasing population over the 40 years we have not had significant increases in beds in Hospitals and especially in the casualty Departments. We all know that to visit the casualty department in any hospital will mean a huge wait for treatment, often over 4 or 5 hrs due to the huge numbers seeking treatment in the waiting area of every casualty in NSW. There has been no significant increase in casualty services even though new hospitals are being built the old hospitals are decommissioned and as such the potential expansions of the casualty services; for example, the new hospital in the Maitland area at Metford is replacing the historical Maitland Hospital that is being decommissioned while it ought to be re-furbished so as to be a part of the potential expansion of health services in NSW.

It is worth noting that the claim for the need to lock down during Covid19 was due to the fact that the hospital emergency services would not be able to cope if there was a huge influx of Covid19 cases. So, the whole shut down of the state is an admission that the health portfolio is in an extremely poor state and there is no immediate plan to fast track an expansion of Health care services.

Policy Position:

The Christians for Community will be seeking to have the decommissioned hospitals evaluated to see if they can be brought back on-line and if so, we will seek to see that this happens as soon as possible. As to the staffing issues we will remove the requirement that Covid19 vaccinations are required by all staff to be employed, as well, we will re-introduce the apprenticeship style training back into the nurse training program; in this way we will have more nursing staff in the wards doing patient care.