UKC Maribor is responding to allegations that critically ill patients are being sent home due to space constraints

SE/STA

17. 10. 2024, 17.31

Updated: 17/10/2024, 17:32

A doctor in the emergency center of UKC Maribor Metin Omerović wrote on Tuesday on the X network that due to personnel and space constraints, patients who are sick enough to be hospitalized have started to be sent home. “So they go home for 12 to 16 hours and come back and try their luck again for admission,” he wrote.

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Marcun Varda however, in a statement to the media today, she said that every patient who is in the emergency center must be treated professionally “and if he needs hospitalization, he must get it”. She added that the management of the institution did not give instructions to send the patients home. “Sometimes you will have to wait several hours for a bed in the emergency center, but a bed has to be found,” she is sure.

She reminded that the lack of beds is not new, they face the problem every winter. “Now it’s autumn and there are already problems, of course we expect more of them in winter, when there will be more respiratory infections,” she said. At the same time, she warned that the flow rate of the emergency center is worse, and among the reasons she cited a greater influx of patients, also “because certain institutions in the area are closing their doors”.

At least two to three more winters without a new department

In the department for infectious diseases and febrile conditions, they have fewer beds this year than last year, namely 20 currently, and a maximum of 26 beds. “Which is 10 to 15 beds less,” said Marčun Varda. She added that last year and the year before, they asked for a covid hospital or a modular hospital, where a larger number of patients could be hospitalized. “Somehow it was indicated to us that maybe there will be a hospital after all, but certainly not this winter,” she said.

According to her, they will have to survive two to three more winters until the new department for infectious diseases is built. There are empty beds in the surgical tower, but they do not have enough staff for them. “Surgeons cannot take responsibility for the treatment of internal medicine or infectious disease patients. As soon as we have a department open in another location, we need a new team to handle it,” she explained.

Capacities are fully occupied, “there is no physical space”

Head of the emergency center Prosen however, he assured that all critically ill patients are treated in the emergency center. “Patients are waiting in the emergency center because the hospital is overcrowded and there is no capacity. This number varies, sometimes eight patients have to stay overnight, sometimes none, but unfortunately this has become our constant,” he explained.

In his statement, Prosen emphasized that the capacities in the departments are fully occupied, “there is no physical space”. “During this process, emergency doctors have to make individual decisions and we decide how we overestimate in a given situation what is best for that patient. If we overestimate that he will have to wait, he will wait, if we overestimate that things could turn around for the better and that there will be no clinical harm, the patient is also discharged.” he explained.

He also added that the attending physician decides on hospitalization. “For an increasing proportion of patients, who are mostly elderly, the hospital environment is not the best destination or place of treatment,” he emphasized. He added that in the emergency center “we try our best to provide quality care to patients. However, it is true that there are delays in the flow through the emergency center”.