Manning Hospital has no trauma team and a serious accident at Cundletown on Sunday saw patients taken to Port Macquarie Base Hospital and John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle for treatment.
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The December 4 head-on collision on Lansdowne Road involved a Toyota utility and a Volkswagen Golf and NSW Ambulance paramedics worked quickly to stabilise the four patients. They then acted to determine which hospital could provide the patients with additional treatment. The decision was based on a protocol in the NSW Trauma Plan and it meant Manning Hospital was not an option.
The nine kilometre journey to Manning Hospital had to become about a 70 kilometre journey to Port Macquarie Base Hospital for two patients who were reported as being in a stable condition. Serious injuries required the other two patients to be airlifted to John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle.
The accident has again thrown the spotlight on the classification of Manning Hospital in the NSW Trauma Plan and highlighted the community expectation of access to trauma treatment at Manning Hospital.
The Manning Great Lakes Community Health Action Group (MGLCHAG) has almost 300 members and its chairman, Alan Tickle said “the call for a review of protocols will keep recurring while ever patients are transported to Port Macquarie and where later examination reveals that their injuries were not serious or could have been dealt with by local medical personnel.”
“Understandably local people would prefer to be assessed and triaged at our local hospital except where the degree of trauma is apparently serious in which case John Hunter Hospital is the obvious destination.
“I do not know how serious the injuries were to the crash victims and I suggest it would be unfair for anyone to speculate and criticise the Ambulance Service personnel for simply doing their job by transporting to Port Macquarie and John Hunter Hospital as protocols dictate.”
Mr Tickle said “the promise of a review of those protocols by the relevant NSW government department gave some heart but whether this has had any traction remains to be seen.”
“From the MGLCHAG point of view, we welcomed the co-operation of Hunter New England Health in having an inquiry by the head of emergency and trauma, Professor Zsolt Balough on the trauma capacity of Manning Hospital. While the report has not been released, the debrief which I attended on behalf of the community, confirmed areas with regard to acute care as needing attention.
“To the credit of our hospital staff, they had already identified those same areas as priorities. The telling statement from Professor Balough in response to a question, was that while there may not be justification for Manning Hospital to be equipped to handle major trauma now, that does not mean that where population growth and demographics dictate, that we can assume that the hospital should not be resourced to that extent in the future.”