{"id":3556,"date":"2013-01-23T12:58:02","date_gmt":"2013-01-23T02:58:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=3556"},"modified":"2013-01-25T00:53:05","modified_gmt":"2013-01-24T14:53:05","slug":"australian-emergency-services-in-need-of-a-lift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/australian-emergency-services-in-need-of-a-lift\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian emergency services in need of a lift"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Emergency<\/a><\/figure>\n

As we\u2019re reminded every bushfire season, Australians are more vulnerable during emergencies that can arise with little warning. We do a fair job of dealing with them, and thankfully we\u2019ve been very lucky to avoid facing a catastrophic event that would produce extensive casualties: a significant terrorist attack, a large-scale industrial accident, a collapse of a city skyscraper, an air disaster, or a tsunami hitting a big population centre. Even an ongoing heat wave that occurred across the country would challenge our healthcare services<\/a>. The truth is that we\u2019re unprepared to respond to a major disaster.<\/p>\n

Those judgments are based on the findings of the December report by the National Health Performance Authority on our emergency departments<\/a>. As I\u2019ve argued in the context of our preparedness for a mass casualty terrorist attack<\/a>, surge capacity\u2014the ability of the medical system to care for a massive influx of patients\u2014remains one of the most serious challenges for national emergency preparedness.<\/p>\n

The NHPA report shows that no major metropolitan hospital in NSW, Victoria, Western Australia, Tasmania or Queensland had met state emergency department benchmarks in the first six months of last year. The Australasian College for Emergency Medicine noted that, across the nation, the sick patients\u2014those who needed to be admitted\u2014are more likely to have inappropriately long stays in emergency<\/a> (Word doc). Research overseas<\/a>\u00a0(PDF)\u00a0has found that patients admitted to hospitals via crowded emergency departments\u00a0might be more likely to die in the hospital than similar patients admitted during slow periods.<\/p>\n

Hurricane Sandy in the US recently underscored the importance of emergency care in the face of disaster<\/a>, when major hospitals in New York lost power and had to evacuate patients at short notice and in dramatic circumstances.<\/p>\n

In developing our health response to a disaster we face some fundamental constraints:<\/p>\n