People requiring emergency surgery at the new $1.5 billion Footscray Hospital are waiting days for treatment, with doctors warning funding and staffing shortages have left operating theatres closed, beds unopened and a diagnostic scanner sitting idle.
More than six months after the long-awaited hospital in Melbourne’s west opened, doctors say some patients needing urgent procedures are waiting up to 72 hours as demand for emergency care soars and staff are unable to open about 170 beds across the health service.
A senior doctor said patients arriving at the hospital’s emergency department needing urgent operations such as removal of an infected or inflamed appendix, abscess drainage, gallbladder surgery or colon surgery were often left waiting up to three days due to a shortage of beds and staff.
“Some of these patients are discharging themselves in disgust because they’ve been waiting three days for their procedures,” the doctor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to speak publicly, said.
“Everyone is saying how amazing the new facility is, which it is, but the problem is the government has not increased any operational funding to meet the increasing demand.”
Demand for emergency surgery at Western Health, which includes Footscray Hospital, has soared by 51 per cent in the past five years.
“Emergency surgery” refers to unplanned operations that are required after a patient arrives at the hospital seeking treatment, and is a separate category from critical surgery in life-threatening cases.
Western Health said all category one – the most urgent planned surgeries – were being completed within the required 30-day timeframe.
The doctor said at least two operating theatres at the new hospital remained closed. The emergency department was also unable to open all its beds due to funding and staffing shortfalls.
New data from the Victorian Agency for Health Information has also laid bare the pressure on the hospital’s emergency department. The data, released late last week, showed the median waiting time for treatment at the hospital’s emergency department was 31 minutes, more than double the statewide average of 15 minutes.
That was five minutes longer than in the January-to-March quarter this year, when the average waiting time to see a doctor or nurse was 26 minutes after arriving at the hospital.
The new hospital in the city’s west can accommodate more than 500 beds, but several staff and a government source confirmed roughly 330 beds were currently open, leaving about 170 beds closed.
“They’ve spent a lot of money building the hospital, but a building doesn’t actually carry out the care of the patients,” another senior doctor said.
“It is the staff who look after the patients. We need more beds. More beds mean we need more operational funding and more nurses and doctors.
“There are wards at this hospital that are not operational because we have no funding to staff them.”
The doctor said most hospitals in Melbourne were running at or above capacity as they were hit with a wave of people turning to them because of a late flu season.
Clinicians have also raised concerns that a state-of-the-art PET scanner, used to help diagnose and monitor diseases such as cancer, has been sitting idle because there is no funding to staff it. Instead, many patients were being forced to go to private facilities to have scans.
A government insider, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Western Health had lobbied for years to fully staff the hospital but had been unable to secure the operational funding required.
The state government has maintained that Footscray Hospital will eventually open more than 500 beds, 268 more than the old hospital, allowing Western Health to treat an extra 15,000 patients each year.
The hospital is one of the state’s largest health infrastructure projects.
The government has so far refused to say when the hospital will reach full capacity, saying the services were intended to expand gradually as demand increased and the community expanded over time.
In May, this masthead reported that doctors at Footscray Hospital feared critical cancer services for Victorians would soon be scaled back.
Under a Department of Health centralisation plan, oesophageal surgeries will be relocated from the new hospital to Geelong Hospital or Peter Mac.
Australian Medical Association Victoria president Dr Simon Judkins said he was told 46 more inpatient beds at the hospital had been opened this year, but surging emergency demand and blown-out surgical waiting lists would continue until the government provided the operational budget needed to run the new hospital.
“Issues around people coming in and waiting days for urgent surgery are unacceptable,” Judkins said. “It is something that we are seeing across the system where people are spending days in hospitals just waiting for surgery, while the ED is full and the ambulances are ramping outside.”
He said health services had been directed to freeze new hiring, preventing them from expanding their clinical teams without state health department authorisation.
“The issues at Footscray are emblematic of what is happening at every hospital across the state,” he said.
Western Health acting chief operating officer Jason Plant said the health service continued to experience strong demand in its emergency departments, surgical services, outpatient clinics and inpatient wards as the population in Melbourne’s west grew.
“The expansion of Footscray Hospital is progressing in stages, with a focus on safely bringing new systems online, supporting our workforce and expanding capacity to meet growing demand,” he said. “We are continuing to work closely with the Department of Health to introduce new services for the community, including PET scanning.”
Victorian Health Minister Ingrid Stitt said the new Footscray Hospital already had more open beds than the old facility, with more continuing to open.
“We know how frustrating it is when faced with long ED wait times,” Stitt said. “It’s why we’re continuing to back our health services with record investment and new solutions to get patients the care they need sooner.”
The state government said it had invested more than $32.3 billion in Victoria’s health system including at Footscray Hospital.
The government said services at the new hospital would continue to scale up as demand grew and added that it was typical for emergency departments in new hospitals to experience a rise in cases after opening.
Last week, a leaked internal email from the Royal Children’s Hospital’s director of emergency medicine, Dr Stuart Lewena, to senior staff claimed 20 beds would remain empty when a long-awaited multimillion-dollar redevelopment is completed this year.
In a scathing memo sent to staff on September 11, Lewena, accused the government of turning down a desperate funding request for more frontline doctors and nurses to be able to open the beds, despite record numbers of sick children flooding to the hospital.
He warned care of sick children was already being affected by staffing shortages and chronic under-resourcing.
The day after the doctor’s claims were published by this masthead, Stitt said the beds would be opened and that funding details were being worked on.
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Melissa Cunningham is a health reporter for The Age. She has previously covered crime and justice.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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