Disturbing images have emerged of elderly patients forced to lie on the floor of a hospital waiting room for hours, while in excruciating pain.
One patient, 70-year-old Raymond, was taken to Blacktown Hospital’s emergency department in Sydney’s west on Saturday, suffering from severe diarrhea and life-threatening haemoglobin levels.
Despite his critical condition, he was left to wait for 24 hours, much of it spent trying to sleep on the cold, hard vinyl floor of the waiting room in agony.
A Heartbreaking Predicament
Raymond’s daughter, Hayley, captured a photo of her father in this heartbreaking situation and shared it with 2GB breakfast host Ben Fordham.
She also shared a photo of another elderly man, 80, who was forced to sleep on the floor, covered in a blanket, after waiting for at least 12 hours for a bed.
The hospital staff then told Raymond that he couldn’t sleep on the floor near reception. “What do you expect a 70-year-old to do?” Hayley asked Fordham.
A Failure of the Healthcare System
NSW Opposition health spokeswoman Kellie Sloane was saddened to see the latest images from one of NSW’s most overstretched hospitals.
“This shouldn’t be happening in our hospitals,” she told Fordham on Tuesday. “Decent people who have paid taxes their entire lives are being let down by the system.”
According to the latest NSW Health data, only 41 per cent of emergency department patients are being treated on time at Blacktown, which ranks last out of 20 hospitals in the treatment of emergency department presentations.
“We need solutions at Blacktown, it’s one of the poorest-performing hospitals in the west of Sydney,” Sloane said.