Royal Children’s Hospital faces empty new emergency beds over staffing shortfall

A confidential email circulated among staff this month disclosed that the Royal Children’s Hospital’s emergency department will finish its $-multimillion redevelopment with 20 new beds idle, because the health system cannot staff them. Dr Stuart Lewena, director of emergency medicine, criticised the state government for refusing funding to recruit additional doctors and nurses, despite a surge to roughly 90,000 child presentations a year—about 50% more than the facility was built for.

The expansion was meant to boost capacity by roughly half, but Lewena argued that new spaces are useless without operational staff. He also rejected the narrative that non-urgent cases are clogging the department, noting that one-third of lower-acuity patients still require emergency treatment. Benchmark data from the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine showed the hospital lags behind peers in nurse and doctor numbers and assessment-bed availability. Hospital officials said they remain in talks with the Department of Health to resolve the staffing gap after construction ends later this year.