Hospital care A central emergency bed management system is being set up in Aargau

The hospitals in Aargau are setting up a central emergency bed management system under the direction of the cantonal health department. There is currently no data exchange between the 144 ambulance emergency call center and the emergency wards regarding the respective capacities. This leads to problems.

According to the cantonal government, due to the unpredictable volume of patients, the emergency wards of the hospitals in Aargau sometimes reach their capacity limits. In some cases, the emergency wards then call a halt to admissions for the rescue services.

Because the search for free treatment places in the hospitals' emergency wards is generally very time-consuming, the heads of the hospitals' emergency wards founded the interest group (IG) "Kommunikation Notfallstationen Kanton Aargau" in December 2022 on the initiative and under the leadership of Kantonsspital Aarau AG (KSA).

Excel spreadsheet did not work

An Excel spreadsheet was initially developed to show the number of empty and available beds in the emergency departments of Aargau's hospitals. However, this did not work properly.

According to the cantonal government, a second meeting of IG representatives took place last May under the leadership of the Department of Health and Social Affairs (DGS). All participants had spoken out in favor of improved mutual transparency. A tool should be set up to make it easier for SNZ 144 to find free treatment places.

In parliament, a motion from the SVP, FDP and GLP had called for centralized emergency bed management. The cantonal government has now agreed to implement this request.

Other cantons are further ahead than Aargau

Most neighboring cantons are one step ahead of Aargau and use the "rescuetrack" tool from Rescuetrack Schweiz AG. The basis of "rescuetrack" is a traffic light system that provides information on the capacity of emergency wards, the cantonal government stated.

The tool for ten hospital locations costs less than CHF 50,000. All cantonal hospitals with emergency wards welcomed the introduction of this tool system.

The hospitals have declared their willingness to introduce the tool. According to the cantonal government, it assumes that the hospitals will contractually undertake to record the capacities of their emergency wards and to cover the costs of the tool on a pro rata basis.