Dr Gary Speck, AMA Vice President on 2CC Canberra - State of Public Hospitals

Dr Speck, good morning and thanks for your time.

GARY SPECK: Good morning Mike. Thank you.

MIKE JEFFREYS: So the very least you could say here is things seem to be heading on the wrong direction, despite the extra money going into the system?

GARY SPECK: Well I think - the statistics I think you're talking about come from the recently released report for the state of our public hospitals which highlighted the present situation in the public hospitals and certainly the emergency department is one of those areas where the overcrowding and the difficulty with restrictions on hospital beds for acute care show up. Patients aren't able to be transferred out of the emergency department to the hospital beds they need so that the waiting time blows out.

MIKE JEFFREYS: Now there are a number of aspects to all this, but just to look at the amount of money involved. Between 1998/9 and 2005/6, the amount of commonwealth money provided for state hospitals went up from $6.1 billion to $9.2 billion, but to put that into perspective, over that same period that money is a proportion of the total spending on state run hospitals fell from 48.1 per cent to 42.7 per cent. At this stage, I suppose what a lot of people will be asking is are we biting of more than we can chew? Can we actually afford the kind of health system we think we deserve?

GARY SPECK: Well I suppose affording it is something that the Government has to decide. They - the last budget had a very large surplus and governments choose what they wish to do with that money and certainly a small amount of it could be spent on the public hospitals and redressing that balance, so that the commonwealth was back up near the 50 per cent mark, in terms of providing funding for public hospitals, would be an appropriate level to look at.

MIKE JEFFREYS: Would that do it or do you think there are other issues that need to be addressed?

GARY SPECK: Well I think - look there's a number of issues, Mike. The immediate redress that we calculated at the AMA last year was that there was approximately a need for 3,750 acute beds, and the cost for that just to get that going would be approximately $3 billion. So, they're substantial amounts of money, yes, but there's a substantial need too.

MIKE JEFFREYS: So the beds, you say beds and I suppose most of is immediately think of exactly that, the beds. But you need the skilled personnel to service the people who are going to occupy the beds as well and they seem to be hard to find.

GARY SPECK: Well I think that's been the case and certainly the hard working doctors and nurses who are already providing the care in public hospitals are certainly feeling the stress and I think that it reflects perhaps in their morale too which I think is low.

I think, at the moment anyway, the number of doctors who are likely to be on the ground is increasing dramatically each year and by 2012 we're going to have almost twice the number of graduates we had five years ago.

So the redress is on the way and at the moment, the Government has initiatives each year and a budget to suggest that they're going to get more nurses into the hospitals and more doctors and that doesn't seem to quite come into effect, so I guess it's their call as to how they make initiatives to get those people in there.

MIKE JEFFREYS: Okay, so then at least by that time it does come down to an issue of the beds, the rooms in which to put those beds, because there should be enough professionals to meet the need.

GARY SPECK: I think there are. It's a matter of attracting them to the public hospital system and certainly whenever we survey surgeons, and I can speak specifically of orthopaedic surgeons, they're always more than willing to give more time to their public hospital commitment, but often it's an on/off affair where funding occurs and then it's switched off. And obviously other things than the doctors and the nurses are part of that. There's the cost of prosthesis and the other ancillary services, but nevertheless it tends to be an on/off rather than a sustained response to the problem.

MIKE JEFFREYS: Dr Speck, I appreciate your time and comments this morning. Thank you very much.

GARY SPECK: Okay, thank you very much, Mike.

MIKE JEFFREYS: Gary Speck, Vice President of the AMA and orthopaedic surgeon. This is 2CC.

ENDS