‘PGH emergency room bursting at the seams’

THE Philippine General Hospital (PGH) has expressed grave concern over the sad state of affairs of its emergency room (ER) following  report that some patients have to wait three days to as long as three  weeks to be accommodated.

PGH director Gerardo Legaspi said the number of patients seeking emergency medical care exceeded the hospital’s emergency room’s capacity of 70 patients.

“Ang aming emergency room was designed only for 70 patients, Sa huli kong census na nakuha, 202 na ngayon ang nasa loob na nasa kama, 40 ang naka-respirator. Para siyang ICU na malaki (Our emergency room was designed for only 70 patients. The latest count showed 202 patients were in the ER, 40 of them on respirator. It looks like a large ICU (intensive care unit),” Legaspi said in a TeleRadyo Serbisyo interview.

He said the PGH implements an emergency severity score system to ensure that patients with the most immediate need are given priority attention.

“Kapag ikaw ay mamamatay within the hour or two hours, nandun ka sa ES 1. Kahit anong puno ng ospital ipapasok ka doon kasi kailangan ka malapatan ng resuscitation o paggamot (If you are on the edge of death, you go to ES 1. No matter if the hospital is full, they will squeeze you in to be resuscitated or revived)” he said.

“Pag ikaw ay ES3, ‘yung may bali sa buto, sugat na hindi naman life threatening, within six hours ma-a-attend (If you are an ES3 case or has broken bones and wounds not life threatening, you have to wait six hours to receive attention), he added.

Those with cough, colds and tummy aches are classified ES 4 and ES5 and
may have to wait even longer to get treated.

Legaspi noted that the PGH needs to triage the patients according to the
severity of emergency to ensure timeliness of care. “If you have
limited resources, limited space, you have to choose who gets accommodated,” he said.

He also said some patients could wait even for two days in an ambulance or benches just to be seen by the doctors,

According to him, the current nurse-patient ratio in the PGH is 1:20.

Other public hospitals are also facing the same problem, Legaspi said.