Ever sat in a hospital waiting hours or days to be discharged even though you were ready to go home? A new report suggests it's a common and costly experience.
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An audit of variations in hospital stays for a range of medical conditions has found Victoria could run a whole new hospital the size of the Royal Children's if every hospital worked as efficiently as the best ones do.
The study, reported by the Victorian Auditor-General Peter Frost on Wednesday, said after adjusting for differences between patients at 21 hospitals, there was a 29 per cent variation in patient length-of-stay across them.
This meant that the best-performing hospitals were discharging patients up to a day earlier than less efficient hospitals for patients having similar treatment. Common barriers preventing discharge included a lack of access to rehabilitation, residential aged care and palliative care facilities.
The report, Hospital Performance: Length of Stay, said with over 1.5 million episodes of care every year, this difference was the equivalent to a 396-bed hospital, which is larger than the Royal Children's Hospital, operating at 100 per cent capacity throughout the year.
"We found widespread variation in acute patient length of stay, indicating inefficiencies and lost opportunities to free up hospital beds, to treat more patients and to reduce significant unnecessary costs," said Dr Frost.
The report said when like-to-like comparisons were made for tertiary, major metropolitan and major regional hospitals, $125 million a year could be directed to other services if all hospitals managed patient stays as efficiently as their highest-performing peers.
Dr Frost recommended the Department of Health & Human Services use its data more actively to assist hospitals to improve their efficiency.
"It is incumbent on the department, as health system manager, to use its data and—in collaboration with hospital management—actively seek to understand, explain and reduce length of stay variances," he said.
The report said the Department of Health and Human Services had accepted the recommendations of the report.
Emergency doctors have long reported that patients can languish for days in emergency departments because hospitals beds are too full.
This "access block" can be exacerbated by problems discharging patients on weekends, especially if the need to access pharmacies which are closed, or other services such as a rehabilitation or aged care units that accept patients Monday to Friday.
Last year, Victorian Health Minister Jill Hennessy said she wanted to look at more innovative ways for hospitals to work, so beds are freed up sooner and people can receive treatment faster.
"Something as simple as opening up a pharmacy and getting people access to the drugs they need and a discharge plan on a Saturday or Sunday meant they could be discharged [home] and other patients admitted," she said in August.
