We’ve been told to save the emergency room for ‘actual’ emergencies, but when you can’t get into a doctor, where are you meant to go?
For Armidale’s Makenzie Wall this scenario is all to familiar.
Wall hurt her knee playing touch football in college, and what should have been a simple GP appointment for a diagnosis became more sinister as the wait for help was delayed.
“When I was playing footy, I turned and felt a pop or crush in my knee,” said Wall.
“Effectively, I had torn part of my patella and done lots of soft tissue damage.”
“I was seeing a physio until I had what looked like a red/purple, hot cyst growing on my kneecap, with pain shooting down my leg whenever I took a step. “
“The GP told me I couldn’t get in for 4 to 5 weeks. Later that night, I ended up in the emergency room to find out the cyst was infectious and had started infecting my joint.”
This is the third time Wall was forced to into an emergency situation from what should have been a simple doctor’s appointment earlier on.
Instead, she joins many others as they battle the choice ‘do they, don’t they’ go to the ED?
She did, and she felt worse for it.
“It made me feel failed by the health system,” said Wall.
“Waiting upwards of nine hours in the emergency room, given antibiotics and being told to come back the next day. I was grateful to have seen someone, but I didn’t trust the health system anymore. I got scans, only to be sent back to the emergency room to wait again.”
Wall says given the choice she would prefer to see a general practitioner and leave the emergency rooms for emergencies.
“If doctors where more accessible and easier to get in too when needed, I would definitely.”
A statewide issue
Challenges in accessing primary care across NSW are continuing to put pressure on busy emergency departments, with more than one in four patients presenting to NSW emergency departments saying they wouldn’t be there if they could just access a general practitioner.
According to the Bureau of Health Information (BHI), 28 per cent of ED patients surveyed say they would have gone to a GP to treat their condition but had no choice other than to go to a hospital.
Minister for Health Ryan Park acknowledges many people are presenting to EDs with non-life-threatening conditions because they could not find an appointment within a reasonable time or a GP that bulk-bills.
“The reality is, however, the Commonwealth’s GP shortage crisis is placing severe pressure on our hospitals as people have little choice but to present to our EDs for non-emergency conditions,” said Park.
The statistics and pride in turning people away
The latest BHI data for the September 2024 quarter shows record pressure on NSW hospitals, with 787,590 ED attendances – up 2.1 per cent or 15,949 compared with the same quarter a year earlier.
NSW Ambulance responses were also the highest on record at 385,873 – an increase of 22,622 responses, or 6.2 per cent, compared with the same period in 2023.
The NSW Government boasted that it was ‘pleasing’ that semi-urgent and non-urgent presentations have continued a downward trend as the bulk of the state government’s urgent care services – which are not the ‘urgent care’ walk in GP model of the federally funded ‘Medicare Urgent Care, but an emergency diversion service – came online. However, despite multiple press releases from Park claiming the Armidale service launched last June as one of their wins, the Armidale service is an abject failure that is currently not operational.
Some 102,000 people were diverted away from EDs during this period by HealthDirect – a phoneline which directs people to a registered nurse who can guide them to a pathway to care outside of the hospital, including through urgent care or virtual care services – up from 72,000 people diverted away from EDs during the same quarter last year.
“The NSW Government is playing our part by making significant investments in both alleviating pressure on our EDs as well as creating alternative pathways to care outside of the hospital,” Park said.
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