09-07-2025
Code yellow emergency called at Royal Darwin Hospital after pressure from AMA, unions
A code yellow has been called at Royal Darwin Hospital (RDH) for the first time in almost a year following a "unified" demand for the emergency response by health unions and the Northern Territory's peak body for doctors.
NT Health released a statement on Tuesday afternoon saying a code yellow had been declared at RDH and its Palmerston campus, Palmerston Regional Hospital.
The statement said both hospitals were experiencing "capacity challenges due to an increase in the number of patients requiring ongoing acute care".
"A range of measures have been implemented to ease pressure and improve patient flow and discharges," it said.
The code yellow is the first since the Country Liberal Party (CLP) government was elected in August 2024.
In the four financial years before the CLP's election win, during Labor's time in power, 41 code yellows were called at RDH.
Shortly after the last NT election, the CLP removed Marco Briceno as NT Health chief executive, replacing him with Chris Hosking.
Both Mr Hosking and Health Minister Steve Edgington were extensively questioned in NT budget estimates last month about the lack of code yellows at RDH since the CLP took power.
During budget estimates, Mr Hosking said pressures at RDH were constant, with patients regularly sharing single cubicles with other patients.
However, he said staff had been managing the movement of patients better, and therefore the threshold for a code yellow at that stage had not been met.
"Getting the patient moving through those patient flows, into a ward, where their care team can provide the clinical care they need, is absolutely what we need to be doing here," he said.
Speaking on ABC Radio Darwin on Wednesday, Australian Medical Association (AMA) NT president John Zorbas said his organisation, as well as unions representing doctors and nurses, had made a "unified call and appeal for a code yellow".
"We had an influx of both members and non-members — so these are doctors and nurses on the ground in the territory — telling us that this has just reached a point where there's absolutely no pressure-relief valves left," he said.
"We knew this a week ago when our members were coming to us, telling us that the hospital was dangerously full.
The NT branch secretary of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, Cath Hatcher, said on Tuesday there were "39 patients in the emergency department in RDH waiting on a bed to become available".
"There [were] only two vacant beds within the whole hospital for two of those 39 patients," she told ABC Radio Darwin.
RDH's serviceability is restricted largely due to more than 40 beds being permanently taken up by patients unable to access residential aged care facilities.
On Wednesday, Mr Hosking said a code yellow "proposal" was put to him on Tuesday afternoon, and he "signed that off".
"Things have certainly been very busy over the last week or so," he told ABC Radio Darwin.
"The actual numbers of presentations we're seeing are not much different to what we've had in the past, but the patients who are presenting are more unwell, they're sicker and they're requiring a higher acuity level of care, which generally means longer stays in hospital and more attention from our clinicians.
"A code yellow is part of a defined escalation protocol; there's a number of preconditions or metrics that need to be met and those had [been met]."
Mr Hosking said until Tuesday afternoon, the "state of patient flow" in RDH hadn't met "those predefined conditions for declaring a code yellow".
"But the moment that it did, that was acted on immediately and signed and the public notification issued," he said.
"I understand that's perhaps not the view out there, but certainly we have acted swiftly on this."
Mr Hosking said he had not been pressured into calling the code yellow by the AMA and unions.
"It's not a case of being forced to do something," he said.
"It's a matter of when's the right time to do it, when have those preconditions been met and they have.
"I know there's been a lot of talk about this over the last little while, and I've long been quite clear in the view that if the conditions for a code yellow are met, then we will call one and we'll act on it."
