No hospital bed for Esperance grandmother with respiratory illness flown by Royal Flying Doctor to Perth

A grandmother in her late 70s with a serious respiratory condition was flown from Esperance to Perth by the Royal Flying Doctor Service — only to be knocked back by Fiona Stanley Hospital when she arrived because there was no bed for her. Trevor Furniss said he was left “dumbfounded” when he was told his wife Dianne would instead be moved to Bunbury Regional Hospital — requiring a second RFDS flight on the same day. “Just total, disorganised chaos would be the pleasant way of putting it,” Mr Furniss said. After becoming ill on Sunday — including having difficulty breathing — Mrs Furniss was admitted to Esperance Health Campus on Monday morning. Worried by her condition, doctors decided to transfer her to FSH for further treatment. An RFDS flight was organised for the following morning, and the last time Mr Furniss saw his wife she was being wheeled into an ambulance to be taken to the airfield early on Tuesday. “At about 12pm I got a phone call from the Esperance hospital and they told me the bed organised at FSH wasn’t available and they’ve had to send her to Bunbury instead,” he said. “No one could tell me how she was getting there — whether she was hitchhiking or going by ambulance or whatever, it was just completely up in the air.” Mr Furniss then rang Bunbury Regional Hospital, who claimed they had no knowledge of his wife. Four hours later, when he called again, he was told Mrs Furniss had just been admitted — after a second RFDS flight to the South West town. The former Esperance councillor and retired transport logistics worker, who like his wife is 77 years old, said he could not understand how a bed supposedly reserved at FSH for his wife had disappeared by the time she arrived 14 hours later. “To me that is just absolute bad organisation on behalf of the health system,” Mr Furniss said. “I’ve been in the transport game all my life, if you can’t organise things a bit better than that – how bloody basic is it?” South Metropolitan Health Service chief executive Paul Forden — who is responsible for FSH — said a change in capacity at the hospital meant a decision was made to divert Mrs Furniss to Bunbury before she arrived, which could provide the “nearest suitable care for the patient”. A question about whether it was common for patients flown from regional WA to find their bed was no longer available when they arrived in Perth was not directly addressed. “WA Health hospitals and health services work together and across regions to ensure patients receive the best possible and most timely care available,” Mr Forden said. WA Country Health Service — which runs the Esperance and Bunbury hospitals — said emergency care was “unpredictable by nature” and that demand was “constantly changing”. “In this case, we were extremely responsive to both of those factors and were able to get the patient to care sooner,” a spokeswoman said. “While we are sorry for any inconvenience this caused Mrs Furniss’ family, we will always put the best interest of our patients first. “Thanks to the extraordinary care of staff at Bunbury Regional Hospital, as well as the team at RFDS, this patient is now in a stable condition and improving.” Liberal leader Libby Mettam said the case was “another appalling example of mismanagement of the health system under a failed health minister as Premier”. “It’s a pretty dire state of affairs where we are seeing regional patients flown to a tertiary hospital in Perth, only to be rediverted back to an alternative regional hospital, highlighting a lack of capacity and co-ordination of a health system under pressure under WA Labor,” Ms Mettam said. “It is disappointing at a time of record budget surpluses that our health system is in such a state that Dianne was not able to go directly to the clinically recommended hospital.”