Amazing waste of medical time in Australian public hospitals

HOSPITAL doctors spend more time socialising with colleagues, filling out paperwork and being interrupted than they do treating patients. Australian researchers found doctors working on hospital wards spend just 15 per cent of their working days treating patients. They are also struggling with constant interruptions, according to the University of Sydney report, which found doctors devoted a third of their time on "professional communications" such as meetings and requests for information not related to medication.

Doctors trying to see patients on their wards are interrupted to attend to other tasks every 21 minutes on average, and up to 15 times an hour for those working in emergency departments. Author Prof Johanna Westbrook said the study debunked doctors' commonly held perceptions about the time consumed by specific tasks. "What we found was that doctors on wards are interrupted at considerably lower rates than those in emergency and intensive care units," she said. "On average doctors spent 15 per cent of their time with patients. The results also confirmed what interns have been saying for a long time that they are dissatisfied with their level of administrative work and documentation."

The team from the university's Health Informatics Research and Evaluation Unit observed 19 doctors at four wards at a 400-bed teaching hospital in Sydney. Publishing the results of the study in the Medical Journal of Australia, Prof Westbrook said doctors had complained that searching for X-rays and records took "all their time", however that actual time spent on such tasks was less than 1 per cent.

Prof Westbrook said this study looked at changes after the introduction of computerised medical record systems. "While such systems are promoted as reducing administrative tasks of clinicians, concerns were raised that many tasks . . . may have actually been quicker with the paper-based systems," she said.

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Wasted facility in an Australian public hospital

A $2 MILLION hyperbaric chamber at Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital, which has never been used since it was built in 2002, will not see its first patient for at least another year. Health Minister Stephen Robertson had promised the machine, critical in the treatment of respiratory ailments, would be up and running by January. But a Queensland Health review of hyperbaric treatment at the hospital is expected to stretch into the next financial year, with the first treatment of a patient unlikely before late 2009, sources told The Sunday Mail.

A Queensland Health spokeswoman yesterday said the machine "is not a white elephant" and "it was never intended to be immediately commissioned", but was part of "long-term planning". Opposition health spokesman John-Paul Langbroek called it another government health "embarrassment".

The article above is by Darrell Giles and appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on May 4, 2008.