You could die waiting !

Once again the subject of ambulance delays at hospital emergency departments has raised it's ugly head. This seems to be a regular occurrence during the winter months when cold weather and flu bugs create a spike in patients needing urgent medical attention.
We get the usual platitudes from the government, the hospital and the ambulance service. The problem is downgraded to a minor matter and we are urged to forget about it - but that is to deny the immensity of the risk that is involved.
The regular compliment of ambulances on standby for the region from Helensburgh to Kiama is nine units. These are scattered in various ambulance stations across the region so that response time is the shortest possible delay from call out to attendance at the patient's location.
If - as happened this week - seven of those ambulances are stuck in a queue for hours because the hospital is waiting to clear emergency department beds - then response time to get to a person suffering a heart attack or a stroke must be outside normal response times.
When the emergency department is clogged, ambulance crews must stay in the parking bay and maintain their patient until the hospital can accept responsibility.
It seems that the reason the system breaks down is because the hospital can not move patients from emergency department beds to beds in the general wards - and one of the reasons that this is so is because the general wards are often " baby sitting " the elderly who are waiting for space to become available in a nursing home.
Winter is a prime time for the elderly to need medical attention and the fact that funds to achieve a reasonable level of nursing home care has been lacking is compounding hospitals being pressed into service as defacto nursing homes - and this is putting acute medical cases at risk.
The whole problem could be rectified if the Federal and state governments simply accepted the fact that we are desperately short of beds for the aged - and did something about it !
Don't hold your breath. Expect the same problem at the same time next winter !