Makeshift structures are being used to cater for overcrowding at Box Hill Hospital.Credit:Scott McNaughton
They say that things that never happened before or happened quite rarely – such as a patient waiting in an emergency department for more than a day – are becoming almost commonplace. They’ve told us that people who have had strokes or a heart attack,who once would have been seen urgently, are now among those routinely having to wait for care.
On Wednesday,journalist Louise Milligantweeted an account of a teenager who she said had just finished chemotherapy,who had waited 27 hours in a corridor of the Box Hill Hospital,alongside heartbreaking photos of his makeshift bed.
The next morning,the daughter of a woman in her 80s who had a suspected stroke,called 3AW radio saying her mother had spentmore than 16 hours in a large tent outside the same hospital.
Unfortunately,data shows these cases are just the tip of a large iceberg. In the three months to June this year,there were 432 patients that languished in the emergency department for more than a day at Box Hill Hospital. In the months before,there had just been a handful.
For some time,those workers managing our hospital and ambulance systems in Victoria have been trying to do their best in a bad situation. It might not meet community expectations,but presumably the alternative to an 83-year-old patient in a bed in a marquee would be that she’d be left in a crowded corridor,even less well-equipped for her needs.