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As reported in The West Australian: 

“The new system — which has been funded to the tune of $40 million — will establish a dedicated, 24/7 hotline for aged care facility staff to contact hospitals in the North and East Metropolitan Health Service catchments. 

“The phone will be manned by a hospital-based consultant and registered nurse tasked with triaging the patient before an ambulance is called. 

“In non-emergencies, that may involve arranging a specialist appointment or direct ward admission at the relevant hospital that would avoid a trip to the ED altogether. 

“In some instances, a doctor or nurse may also be dispatched to the aged care facility to provide treatment on-site.” 

“I think this will be challenging for some (health workers) who have practiced in a very traditional way, but by far and away this is the future,” Ms Sanderson said. 

“I expect to end up with a… system that can be scaled up for the community and eventually what you’d want is access for community members to be able to have a look on an app or call a phone line that isn’t Healthdirect — because Healthdirect send everyone to hospital.” 

I fronted the media with the following statement: 

“The AMA (WA) welcomes any health announcement that may help the system overall. However, it’s greatly concerned that this announcement will fall well short of that mark. Ramping is a symptom of our poor health system, it’s not a cause. Reducing ramping by itself will not reduce hospital occupancy. We will still have bed block cancellation of elective surgery and higher death rates in hospital than we need to endure. At best, this new system will reduce unnecessary hospital transfers to our emergency departments from nursing homes.  

“However, all of the patients who are sick and require a proper bed will still need to go to the emergency departments to find that the hospitals are still full. The system needs greater capacity and increased funding to allow us to deliver good, safe and quality healthcare. The McGowan government increased non-COVID health spend last year in their budget by 3 per cent, less than CPI. If the McGowan Government does not increase the non-COVID health spend in the next budget by at least 5-10 per cent, it will indicate contempt of the McGowan government for the healthcare system and the health of you, the people of WA. 

“A virtual ED has already been trialled at Fiona Stanley Hospital and has been found to have little or no effect on bed block. If someone thinks that this is going to be a silver bullet or a panacea to fix our ailing and poor health system, their opinion is misplaced and naive.” 

Perhaps the first question directed at me by a journalist gave a sense of the reception to the announcement: “What has the minister tried to do here? Make an announcement without any substance and try to convince the public that this is the solution to ramping?” 

“At least this is an attempt and something positive coming out of the Minister’s office to show they’re at least thinking about our system and trying to fix it,” I responded.  

“However, I feel that this will fall very short of having any major impact on bed block. Our hospitals will remain at approximately 100 per cent occupied, which means that we’ll have high rates of cancellation of elective surgery and unfortunately for the people of WA, higher death rates in those hospitals than what we need to have.” 

Look, I’m more than happy to be proven virtually total wrong on all this. A significant improvement in ramping numbers would be most welcome. It’s just that I’m virtually sure this is unlikely to have the desired effect. Now, on to the future…