Lack of aged care facilities in Top End fuels ‘code yellow’

The Royal Darwin and Palmerston Hospitals in the Northern Territory last week declared ‘code yellow’ due to capacity challenges, for the first time in almost a year.

The Health Department issued the ‘code yellow’ late on Tuesday afternoon for both hospitals, citing an “increase in the number of patients requiring ongoing acute care”.

Australian Medical Association (AMA) NT president Dr John Zorbas said the daily reality was that RDH remained “dangerously full”.

“We know the hospital has been over-full for quite some time now,” Dr Zorbas said

“During the week, we’ve had doctor after doctor come to us with fairly horrible situations in the hospital.

“It’s clear that the hospital is too full to function properly.”

Dr Zorbas said a ‘code yellow’ can act as a “circuit breaker” to help hospital staff deal with the current capacity crisis but does not fix the long-term capacity issues.

“We need to talk about capacity and the fact remains that RDH is full, remains full and will continue to be full once this ‘code yellow’ stops,” he said.

“We’ve seen nurses and doctors who are going home in tears from their shifts.

“They’re absolutely burnt out and every shift that they walk out of like this is another reason to leave the NT and we don’t want that at all.

“They are broken.”

If the new wards at RDH are fully staffed and funded, he said it could help the issues but Dr Zorbas said that one of the main ongoing issues to bed pressures each week is the amount of patients who should be in an aged care facility.

“In context, we have half the number of aged care beds per capita compared to any other state or territory,” he said.

With 42 beds being used by long stay aged care patients in Palmerston Hospital on Wednesday alone, he said having an aged care facility would provide some relief to the public system.

“We would have 42 beds available to people for delivering health care and we probably wouldn’t be in a ‘code yellow’,” he said.

“We’re working really hard with our Commonwealth counterparts to try and establish some more capacity here in the Territory.”

The ‘code yellow’ called for Royal Darwin Hospital and Palmerston Hospital was lifted on Monday.

The calling of the code comes just weeks after the NT Health Minister and NT Health chief executive said they had not needed to call one since August 2024 due to new processes being in place at Royal Darwin Hospital (RDH).

NT Health chief executive Chris Hosking said he has always maintained that if the set of conditions for a ‘code yellow’ were reached, he would have no problem issuing the call.

“When the hospital management came to me [...] and said, ‘Look, all of the preconditions for a code yellow have been met, we’d like to call it’, I signed it off immediately,” Mr Hosking said.

Previously, Health Minister Steve Edgington and Mr Hosking were questioned on the lack of code yellows issued, replying that the notification and identification process had not changed.

Mr Hosking said improved processes including moving patients to available beds quickly had helped to reduce bed blocks and that RDH was “not in crisis”.

What is the government doing?

During the federal election campaign in April, the Albanese government unveiled its Health and Aged Care Plan for the Northern Territory, which included a record $60m to support the construction of a much-needed new residential care home in Darwin.

The facility will deliver no less than 120 new residential care beds to the city, which the Labor Party said will directly address critical supply shortages.

At the time Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his government was “building the Northern Territory’s future.”

“We have already allocated a record $560m towards hospitals in the Northern Territory and today our new health and aged care plan will build on this record investment,” he said.

The plan also detailed a further $10m investment into CareFlight for the purchase of a new plane for medical evacuations and patient transport, as well as an upgraded Medicare Mental Health Centre in Alice Springs and a Headspace centre in Darwin.