SA government’s latest move to ease pressure on public hospital beds

ABC NEWS (Australia)

It is the South Australian government’s latest move to ease the pressure on public hospital beds. A plan to move dozens of medically stable patients to a city hotel to free up much needed space. And outside hospitals the pressure is still on, with a marginal increase in ambulance ramping hour since December.

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00:00Checking out of the hospital and into the suite life.

00:07I just don't need everything that the hospital room entails.

00:11Supported by on-site medical staff, 24 patients awaiting rehab, at-home support or those who

00:18are post-operation will be relocated to their own room in a city hotel.

00:23It's been greenlit for 12 months following success of this alternative model in Queensland.

00:29What we've seen in Gold Coast is that it has expanded.

00:33They started I think with one floor, they've moved to two.

00:36It's the government's latest attempt to stem the bedlock in public hospitals,

00:40especially for its ageing population.

00:43Productivity Commission data has found elderly South Australians wait 253 days

00:50to be placed in aged care, the longest in the country.

00:54Clearly also issues in other states as well, but we are really the tip of the spear.

00:58of that federal aged care issue.

01:01Outside hospitals, the latest SA Health data shows ambulances spent more than 3,400 hours

01:08waiting at emergency departments in January.

01:11It's an increase of 68 hours compared to December,

01:14but down from the record high of more than 5,500 hours in July.

01:19That's still well above any of those months during the former Liberal government.

01:23They promised to fix ramping, they haven't.

01:25We always said that this was going to take through the course of the four years

01:29to make sure that we can see those improvements.

01:31Showing there's still room for improvement.

01:34Sophie Landau, ABC News.

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