Logan Hospital has been forced to correct a memo it issued ordering ambulances to wait outside the emergency department with patients if all its offload bays are full at the facility, as the ambulance union says hospital staff are using “standover tactics” to keep paramedics waiting outside. Queensland Health has spoken to Metro South Hospital and Health Service’s chief executive Dr Stephen Ayre and Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) commissioner Russell Bowles urging them to work together to resolve rising tensions between paramedics and emergency department staff at the facility south of Brisbane. Under a “rapid transfer” process put in place last year, nine designated areas are in place at the hospital to allow paramedics to offload patients into emergency departments, so ambulances could get back on the road. Yesterday, Logan Hospital issued a memo stating that if all nine bays were full, emergency department staff should request paramedics to wait outside the hospital until a bed was available — a process known as “ramping”. But Queensland Health director-general Michael Walsh said the memo was wrong. “The process when an ambulance arrives is: the person is triaged and the most appropriate location for a person to be cared for while they wait — if they don’t need to be critically assessed and moved into the emergency department — is arranged inside,” Mr Walsh said. “The memo which said that people needed to go outside is incorrect and has been corrected. “I want to be clear that nobody who arrives at our emergency departments are turned away. Mr Walsh said the rapid transfer process worked smoothly at several other hospital and health services and he had urged the head of Metro South and the QAS to sort through the issue. “That is something we need to hear back as to how they’re going to improve it and make the process work smoothly,” Mr Walsh said.
