COAG report confirms no improvement in public hospitals and shortage of hospital beds
AMA President, Dr Steve Hambleton, said today that the COAG Reform Council’s latest report on the National Healthcare Agreement confirms the findings of the AMA’s annual Public Hospital Report Cards – there are not enough hospital beds and there are too many patients languishing on waiting lists.
Dr Hambleton said that, on the basic measures, there has been no real change in the capacity of our hospitals to meet demand.
“Despite an almost 10 per cent increase in recurrent expenditure on public hospitals, there has been no real change in the key performance measures,” Dr Hambleton said.
“Doctors on the ground, working in public hospitals every hour of every day, know that there has been little change to relieve the stress on hospitals and the health professionals who work in them.
“There were 872 more public hospital beds than in the previous year, but the number of beds per 1,000 population did not change. This means the new beds merely kept pace with the population and did nothing to increase the capacity of the hospitals.
“This has a direct impact on elective surgery performance, which is not improving. This is not acceptable to the patients waiting long periods for treatment.”
Dr Hambleton said the situation is even worse when you consider the hidden waiting lists.
“There are people who have been referred by their GP and waiting to see a public hospital specialist to be assessed for surgery who are not counted in the waiting list data. They only get counted after they see the specialist and get booked in for surgery.
“This is the sort of information that patients want and need to know. It is a real measure of the health system,” Dr Hambleton said.
“The AMA recommends that, as well as measuring the hidden waiting lists, the COAG Reform Council should adopt the AMA’s Bedwatch proposal to conduct a national stocktake of the actual numbers of beds needed in each hospital to provide safe care.
“Bedwatch would track existing beds, new beds and bed occupancy rates to ensure that bed occupancy rates in public hospitals meet the AMA’s preferred level of 85 per cent bed occupancy,” Dr Hambleton said.
The Reform Council Report highlights affordability as a reason for people delaying or not going to a GP.
Dr Hambleton said this is not consistent with Medicare data that show 80 per cent of GP services are provided with no out-of-pocket costs for patients.
“Our hardworking GPs are bearing the financial burden of providing safe, high quality, affordable primary care to the Australian community,” Dr Hambleton said.
14 June 2012
CONTACT: John Flannery 02 6270 5477 / 0419 494 761
Kirsty Waterford 02 6270 5464 / 0427 209 753
