There’s been increasing complaints about waiting four hours or longer to see a doctor in the Emergency Room at the LBJ Hospital.
And people are airing their frustrations on social media,,,not just adults but even young people.
One man said after waiting more than four hours for his grandson to have a bandage change he called the LBJ CEO’s Office in anger.
Told the CEO was in a meeting, he said he gave his name and told the secretary if something is not done, he would go to the CEO’s meeting and disrupt it.
LBJ CEO Faumuina John Faumuina says they are aware of the public complaints about the long waiting hours at the Emergency Room.
“This is not a new issue facing LBJ and we have been looking at various options to resolve this without compromising the quality of care at the ER,” he said.
He explained, “LBJ tried setting up two separate clinics, one to handle emergency or urgent cases, and the other for non-urgent patients.
“This is determined by triage when the patient walks in to see a doctor.
“We also ask the non-urgent patients to consider visiting the primary health care clinic in Tafuna or the one across the street at the Department of Health.”
According to the CEO, more than 70% of the ER patient visits are non-emergency cases, which means that 30% of the ER patient visits had to be seen first.
He elaborated that there are multiple reasons for the long waiting hours and LBJ is working diligently to resolve them, such as adequate staffing, delayed test results from the ancillary services, such as radiology and lab, adequate space for patients under observation, as well as on-call services, equipment, and adjustment to the new Electronic Health Record system.
Faumuina says,” We do not object to public complaints for long waiting hours at the ER but the public must also understand that the ER is meant for urgent and emergency cases.
“For patients that opt to call an EMS ambulance to bring them to the ER, they need to understand that they also have to go through the triage process to determine if their case falls under urgent or non-urgent.”
Regarding doctor hires, Faumuina says since the beginning of 2018, LBJ Hospital has recruited three ER physicians, one Radiologist, and one General Surgeon.
KHJ News asked about two doctors from Fiji who had been working in the ER whose contracts were not renewed.
According to the CEO their contracts were not renewed “due to practice and patient safety reasons according to medical staff review.”
