How bad is overcrowding in Australian hospitals?
Peter Sprivulis: Overcrowding is recognized as a major problem, particularly in Australian tertiary hospitals, and in all Australian major capital cities. It’s a problem that has attracted significant attention, particularly at a state government level. The U.S. cities that I visited—large, metropolitan areas with an aging demographic—had similar problems. The principal indicator is a statistic called “access block,” where we measure the proportion of patients who take longer than eight hours from arrival at a hospital emergency department (ED) to move to an inpatient bed. In most Australian tertiary hospitals, well over 20 percent of patients take more than eight hours to be moved to a bed. At that level, it is usually associated with problems of reduced capacity in EDs; the patients consume space and staff resources. This results in difficulty seeing new cases and in diverting patients to alternative EDs. What happens in overcrowded hospitals? Sprivulis: Most large hospitals—between
