AMA Challenges Coalition and Labor to Commit to New Public Hospital Beds
AMA President, Dr Rosanna Capolingua, today called on both the Coalition and Labor to acknowledge that Australia needs more public hospital beds and that current hospital occupancy in the major public hospitals is no longer tenable.
"We need at least 3,750 new public hospital beds just in the five big States to achieve safe bed occupancy levels of 85 per cent," Dr Capolingua said.
"This addresses safety and will ease bed block.
"We recognise that even more beds would be needed to tackle unmet need, but with these new beds our public hospitals would be more functional and allow doctors to treat more patients.
"More beds relieving the pressure would also encourage doctors and nurses who have been driven out by compromising work conditions and inadequate resources to come back and stay in the public hospital system."
Dr Capolingua said the newly elected Federal Government must inject $3 billion up front in the next Australian Health Care Agreement (AHCA) and allocate the right amount of this funding for new public hospital beds nationally.
The $3 billion would address the Commonwealth underfunding of public hospitals identified in the June 2007 State of our Public Hospitals report.
This cash injection would need to be accompanied by indexation of 8-9 per cent over the life of the AHCA, as compared to the current indexation of around 5 per cent.
The additional funding will enable the States and Territories to purchase additional beds in the first year and, and then bed numbers must continue to meet the minimal 85 per cent occupancy and increasing need over time.
The State breakdown of the 3,750 new beds nationally would be:
NSW 1,600
Vic 600
Qld 850
SA 300
WA 400
This does not include the estimates for new beds needed in Tasmania, the Northern Territory, and the ACT, which we know run at unacceptable bed occupancy, but bed number data is insufficient to provide numbers at this stage.