Grampians Health officials have indicated Tuesday's state-wide emergency "Code Brown" declaration would not result in any immediate or profound changes in approach to the region's hospital system.
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Grampians Health chief medical officer Matthew Hadfield said Grampians Health had already been making internal management adjustments in response to the pressure created by staff shortages and COVID-admissions, flagging further would be likely if pressure were to increase.
"The pressure on all departments in every part of the hospital has been gradually increasing," Mr Hadfield said. "We'll undoubtedly have to implement further actions to maintain levels of staffing and deal with the influx of [COVID] patients as time goes by, but don't expect a sudden change in how we manage things already."
The code brown alert - normally reserved for short-term emergencies - enables hospitals to reconfigure internal services to free up and redeploy staff to areas of greatest need.
Though this includes an ability to temporarily suspend staff leave entitlements, Mr Hadfield said that would be an option of last resort, despite Grampians Health losing up to 100 shifts per day due to COVID-19 illness or isolation.
"We have an exhausted staff that need as much rest and recuperation time as possible," he said. "The policy should be that we'll maintain staff leave wherever possible."
Mr Hadfield added that Grampians Health would minimise the extent to which less urgent services would be deferred, and all but ruled out the cancellation of category one elective surgeries.
"We will maintain [a] core surgical service because emergency and category one [elective] surgery is essentially surgery for life-threatening conditions," he said. "At the moment we have capacity to continue all category one surgeries."
Mr Hadfield said Ballarat Base Hospital would work closely with the St John of God Hospital to ensure this continuity of care.
But emergency doctor Mark Harris, who also serves as a Ballarat councillor, said the lack of in-built "surge capacity" in Victoria's hospital system - as reflected by the unprecedented decision to call a state-wide code brown - meant the cancellation of category one surgery was probably inevitable.
"The chances are we're not going to have surgical capacity for elective surgery for some weeks, probably months," Dr Harris said. "It's going to be tough and it's going to be testing."
"The capacity to treat our COVID in-patients will come at the cost of foregoing both elective surgeries and leave [entitlements] down the line."
The dedicated COVID-ward at Ballarat Base Hospital will continue to treat all COVID in-patients in the Ballarat and Grampians region for the foreseeable future.
Grampians Health confirmed it only learned of the decision to call a state-wide code brown as it was announced on Tuesday morning, but said it had had its code brown protocols on standby for two years.
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