00:00Wayne Jones is recovering from brain surgery.
00:06Basically the scars healed nicely.
00:09But Wayne's time in the emergency department at Perth's Sir Charles Gardner Hospital was anything but nice.
00:16It was standing room only.
00:18It all took about four hours waiting there.
00:22No seats, I was just propped up on my crutches, standing there with my daughter.
00:29A brain tumour meant he had almost no movement on one side of his body.
00:34At the end I was pretty exhausted and I was glad to get on the examination bed and have a bit of a rest for a while.
00:42But the time Wayne waited is actually below the average.
00:46New data from the Australasian College of Emergency Medicine reveals 90% of us are waiting between 12 and 16 hours in emergency before being admitted.
00:57The wait is longest for those with mental health presentations.
01:01Some mental health patients are waiting five or six days in the emergency department.
01:06College President and Director of Emergency at Alice Springs Hospital, Stephen Gawley, says patient safety is at risk.
01:14The longer people are waiting for a bed and waiting for the definitive care in the hospital itself, the higher the rates of morbidity and even mortality goes up.
01:23He says hospitals are jammed because beds are filled by older Australians who can't get a place in aged care.
01:29They often stay in hospital for quite a prolonged period of time.
01:32When I say a long period of time, that could be months or in some cases up to a year or more.
01:37To address this issue, the government will soon launch a $57 million program to help dementia patients transition from hospital to an appropriate aged care facility.
01:48The scheme will start in Adelaide and Hobart before being rolled out across the country.
01:53Doctors say the biggest challenge is finding the healthcare workers to run such schemes.
01:58Something needs to change and it probably should have changed ten years ago.
02:02It will take a lot to restore Wayne Jones' confidence in the hospital system.
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