NSW Audit Office - Financial Reports – 2003 - Volume 2 – Review of Nepean Hospital Emergency Status

Review of Nepean Hospital Emergency Status BACKGROUND TO OUR REVIEW On 13 March 2003 the Shadow Minister for Health requested the Auditor-General to examine the emergency status coding of Nepean Hospital. Her concern was that emergency status data she had obtained from the Department of Health for each Sydney metropolitan hospital in October and November 2002 showed significantly lower ‘Code Red’ hours for Nepean Hospital than data she had obtained directly from Nepean’s Emergency Department. (See below for an explanation of ‘Code Red’.) We are reviewing this matter because the capacity of hospitals to cope with emergency patients is critical to the standard of patient care. If the systems measuring a hospital’s ability to cope with patient numbers are not robust, then inappropriate decisions may be made. KEY FINDINGS The data obtained by the Shadow Minister for Health directly from the Nepean Hospital Emergency Department is only a partial measure of the Hospital’s overall ability to handle emergency patients. We found a number of instances where the Ambulance Service records (and hence the Department of Health’s records) of Nepean Hospital’s status differed from the Hospital’s own records. We intend to carry out a wider review of the integrity of the systems for evaluating hospitals’ capacity to handle emergency patients. This review will examine whether a sample of larger hospitals correctly follow the Department of Health guidelines for ...