Health officials warn of impending crisis at the NT’s biggest hospital

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Health officials and insiders are claiming the Northern Territory's main hospital, Royal Darwin, is reaching a tipping point - citing budget blow outs, a lack of beds, and a huge staff turnover. They're warning of dire consequences if things don't change soon.

Transcript

00:00 A hospital on the brink.

00:07 At the end of the day, something has to give.

00:09 We can't keep doing this forever.

00:14 The Northern Territory's biggest and busiest health facility in its own emergency.

00:20 We're working on an emergency management type of condition.

00:23 You could call it even disaster services when you're actually going above and beyond what

00:27 you actually prepare to do on a normal basis.

00:33 Inside the hospital walls, a nightmare is playing out for some patients.

00:39 We didn't sleep for two days.

00:41 Disability pensioner Deb Jones was recently admitted to Royal Darwin's Emergency Ward

00:47 in severe pain from a chronic health condition.

00:51 She became one of many sharing a single cubicle with another patient, a problem known as double

00:57 bunking.

00:58 It's horrible because you're having this personal conversation about your personal health and

01:04 your personal issues and someone else is listening to you, what's going on?

01:09 And it's just total invasion of privacy.

01:12 It's not just patients feeling the crush.

01:15 An internal emergency warning system called a Code Yellow is triggered when the hospital

01:21 is too stretched to deliver normal services.

01:24 Royal Darwin's first ever Code Yellow was called in 2018.

01:28 Last financial year, there were 18 of them.

01:32 Proof is that we've normalised disaster.

01:35 The Code Yellow, whether it's in Code Yellow or not Code Yellow, either way the hospital

01:39 is still full.

01:41 Health officials say the main cause of a Code Yellow is demand and a lack of beds to cope.

01:48 On any given day, up to 70 beds are taken by aged care patients with nowhere else to

01:54 go.

01:55 Ultimately, underfunding of aged care is the biggest single factor facing the Northern

01:59 Territory for our issues with overcrowding and access block.

02:03 Patients requiring elective surgeries are paying the price.

02:06 I've never been able to get a date.

02:09 It just keeps getting pushed out and pushed out and pushed out.

02:13 Last financial year, the average overdue wait time for elective surgeries in the NT was

02:18 391 days, the longest of any jurisdiction.

02:23 Just 68% of patients were admitted within the clinically recommended timeframe.

02:28 That has been one of the mitigation strategies that we put in place.

02:30 We rationalise elective surgery.

02:32 That gives us access to 8 or 12 beds in that particular day.

02:38 Exacerbating services, the Northern Territory has some of the worst health outcomes in the

02:43 country, due largely to high chronic disease rates in remote Indigenous communities.

02:49 Aboriginal primary health care providers are trying to help prevent hospital admissions,

02:54 but they too are struggling under the load.

02:57 At the moment it takes two to three weeks for a client to be able to get an appointment

03:02 with one of our GPs.

03:04 So that just goes to show the sort of pressure that our clinics are under right now.

03:09 Danila Dilba caters to Indigenous people in Greater Darwin, but its chief executive says

03:14 it's underfunded by $60 million a year, putting the pressure back on Royal Darwin.

03:21 The system is designed for all parts of it to be working well.

03:25 And I think when you see hospitals overloaded, it's a signal that the whole of the system's

03:31 not working.

03:32 NT Health also faces huge challenges from high staff turnover.

03:37 With a reliance on local nurses and doctors, the department has overspent its budget every

03:43 year since 2016, including a $200 million blowout this financial year.

03:49 The more we look into this, the more we realise that there is not a magic bullet or a simple

03:53 solution to a very complex problem.

03:55 The NT government says it's rallying the Commonwealth to provide more money to help heal an ailing

04:02 system from its chronic condition.

04:04 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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