New internal documents have revealed how patients could be left in hospital corridors to combat ramping in Queensland.
9News has seen new leaked emails, sent to staff at Bundaberg Hospital’s emergency department, about a potential plan to deal with ramping and bed block.
It included putting inpatients in “designated corridor locations”.
If that happens, the email said: “Patients need to be placed on trolleys rather than ward beds to allow passage of other movement through the corridor.”
The email added that “placing patients out of reach of call bells, in-wall oxygen, in-wall suction and reinforces the need for an allocated nurse to the overflow patients”.
Queensland Health said the plan was not official policy and had not been implemented.
When asked about the emails, Health Minister Shannon Fentiman said treating patients in corridors was absolutely not ideal.
“We want people to be treated in emergency spaces. Of course we do. That’s why we have a thousand more beds coming on line,” she said at a press conference today.
The 78-year-old man was suffering from a severe diabetic complication while ramped before he died of a heart attack.
The emails indicated paramedics had escalated their concern about his worsening condition on multiple occasions to staff at the hospital.
In one email, Queensland Ambulance medical director Dr Stephen Rashford told other health bosses that the man “should never have remained ramped”.
A senior doctor at the hospital claimed the man was ramped for about an hour, rather than two.
“Ideally, we would want to offload that patient into a bed as soon as he arrived. We were unable to do that due to the circumstances available,” Dr David Green said today.
