NSW: Queensland hospital airlift not unusual, Della Bosca says

AAP General News (Australia)
12-03-2008
NSW: Queensland hospital airlift not unusual, Della Bosca says

SYDNEY, Dec 3 AAP - NSW Health Minister John Della Bosca has defended the airlifting
of a NSW car crash victim to a Queensland hospital, saying transporting patients over
state borders is not unusual.

Georgie Batterson was flown 400km to Queensland's Gold Coast for emergency surgery
when no intensive care beds could be found for her in NSW hospitals.

The 56-year-old suffered critical injuries in a crash on the Pacific Highway near Kempsey
on the NSW mid-north coast on Saturday night.

She was taken to Kempsey Hospital, where a doctor on the Westpac Rescue helicopter
spent two hours calling hospitals in Sydney and Newcastle begging them to take the woman,
News Ltd said.

But no intensive care bed could be found in NSW and Mrs Batterson was eventually airlifted
to a private hospital on the Gold Coast.

She is now in an induced coma.

Mr Della Bosca said on Wednesday that airlifting NSW patients to other states was not unheard of.

"It is not unusual for emergency patients to be transported and cared for between jurisdictions
from time to time, (but) it is not an absolutely regular occurrence," he told Fairfax
Radio Network.

"We do the same for Queensland, the Capital Territory, and Victorian patients, and vice-versa.

"Let's ignore the idea of artificial boundaries on the map, let's look at the need
of the patients, that's what the doctors and nurses do, that's what we support, we've
got agreements in place for Queensland and Victoria and all systems to facilitate that."

Mr Della Bosca said he would investigate why it took so long to airlift Mrs Batterson
from Kempsey, and why doctors manually called hospitals to find a bed rather than use
the NSW Ambulance Service's Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system.

Mrs Batterson's son Wayne said she was admitted to Kempsey Hospital around 7pm (AEDT),
but it was not until after midnight that she was finally airlifted to another hospital,
after two hours waiting on the tarmac.

"The trauma doctor that came on the Westpac chopper was on the phone most of the time
trying to find a bed for her (somewhere in NSW)," he told Fairfax Radio Network.

"He rang places about two or three times saying, `Can we please get her in? Can we
please get her in?

"That went on for easily one-and-a-half to two hours."

Mr Della Bosca said the delays were a concern.

"The delay appears inexplicable because the ambulance service does have a CAD assistance
system, which finds ICU beds or other specialist trauma beds much more quickly than doctors
or nurses on a ring-around," he said.

"I intend to find out in the next couple of hours why it was so that there was a manual
ring-around rather than use the ambulance system CAD, which may have found an ICU bed
in NSW, and may have certainly meant that Georgie could have got her treatment much more
quickly."

Mr Della Bosca said he empathised with the trauma experienced by the Batterson family,
including Georgie's husband Ian who suffered whiplash in the car accident and had to comfort
her during the five-hour wait.

But he defended the work of staff at Kempsey Hospital, saying they did "absolutely
the best they could".

"When someone is seriously injured like their mother and wife was, that is a terrible
thing to see," he said.

"I can only say all my advice is that the paramedics in that case handled the transfer
in difficult situations with the professionalism that we would expect of them."

AAP ab/wjf/ldj/bwl

KEYWORD: BATTERSON UPDATE

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