Vic: Ambulances forced to by-pass hospitals during dispute: Opp

AAP General News (Australia)
08-26-2001
Vic: Ambulances forced to by-pass hospitals during dispute: Opp

By Trevor Chappell, State Political Correspondent

MELBOURNE, Aug 26 AAP - Several major public hospitals in Melbourne had been unable
to take emergency patients for unacceptable and dangerous lengths of time during the recent
nurses dispute, the Victorian opposition said today.

Opposition health spokesman Robert Doyle said the decision by nurses to close hospital
beds in their dispute over staffing levels had forced the Monash Medical Centre and the
Royal Melbourne Hospital to both go on ambulance bypass for 16 hours on August 10 and
August 9 respectively.

Official figures obtained by Mr Doyle showed that other major hospitals on ambulance
bypass on August 10 were the Austin, Box Hill, Northern and St Vincent.

Mr Doyle said that over four days from Friday, August 10, to Monday, August 13, many
hospitals throughout the city were unable to accept emergency patients.

He said the state government had caved in to the demands of nurses after letting the
hospital system "grind to a halt" over those four days.

"They (the state government) actually gave in to the nurses on all of their demands
in the end," Mr Doyle told reporters.

"They asked the nurses to lift the bans, which the nurses did, and then they gave the
nurses what they wanted in terms of (staff) numbers and in terms of funding.

"If that's what they were going to do, why put Victoria and why put Melbourne through
four days of unprecedented closures in hospitals?"

Mr Doyle said it would be several months before the full effect of the bed closures
would be known.

"With beds closed, emergency departments full and scheduled operations being cancelled,
Victoria's rapidly-growing waiting list can only get worse as a result of the government's
inability to solve the dispute quickly," Mr Doyle said.

"Ambulance bypass is the Achilles heel of the Bracks government, the part-time Health
Minister John Thwaites and the health system."

A government spokesman was not immediately available to comment.

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KEYWORD: NURSES VIC

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