Say what?

Cairns base hospital hasn't grown at the same speed as the population. This leads to backlogs in the ER at peak times , its not unusual for there to be six or seven ambulances in the car park caring for patients awaiting admission.

Peak times are Friday and Saturday nights with a load of PFO's (p****d and fell over) and any other day or time of the week really. Part of the weekend problem is that the admin department doesn't work on the weekends, so patients with heart attacks and such stay in the ER until they can be admitted to wards on the Monday.

This of course had led to "political interest" with whoever is in opposition visiting and saying, "Ooooh, shocking, if we were in power we'd do something." and whoever is in power promising vast amounts of money but no action, and never, under any circumstances, visiting.

This week a visiting politician (in power, had no-one warned him?) visited and on a sunny Tuesday afternoon there were seven ambulances caring for patients in the car park. " You have to expect bottlenecks " he said and swanned of. The paper with no other interesting tidbits decided to interview the patients in the ambulances.

The point of the story. One lady said it was "Shocking" how long she had been waiting. The same thing had happened last time she came in an ambulance. She said , and I quote, " After two hours waiting I started to feel ill, so I went home." Say what? Did she not feel ill when she called the ambulance? or does she have one booked on a speculative basis on a weekly retainer in case she requires emergency admission?

Perhaps this explains part of the bottleneck problem at the hospital?