Elective Surgey Waiting Lists Funding - Radio Interview

Now I notice that the New South Wales Health Minister, Reba Meagher, has put her hand up for as much as a third of the money.

The AMA have a great interest in this. Their National President, Rosanna Capolingua is on the line. Good to talk to you again, happy New Year.

DR CAPOLINGUA: Good morning. Yes, happy New Year to you.

STEVE PRICE: It's going to come down to the States fighting tooth and nail with each other for the dollars, is it?

DR CAPOLINGUA: I hope they're not going to be fighting so much. Of course each State will have done their homework, and they'll come to the table today putting forward to the Federal Health Minister their State initiatives for dealing with the elective surgery wait list. You can't deny every State will have a claim to make, they've all got patients waiting, and hopefully there'll be that cooperative spirit that we have seen exhibited so far, that will lubricate the meeting today. Between the State Health Ministers and the Federal Minister, we'll get some positive outcomes.

STEVE PRICE: Are any States doing worse than others?

DR CAPOLINGUA: We launched a Public Hospitals report card in the second half of last year, and ...

STEVE PRICE: Yes, I remember talking to you about it.

DR CAPOLINGUA: Yes, that's right. All the States have got particular and peculiar problems, there's no doubt about that. We could see that the Victorian public hospital sector was running more efficiently than the other States, but they were in desperate need for an injection of funds, and we know that New South Wales has certainly had some hard times, as has every other State, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, ACT, Tasmania, and the Northern Territory. They've all got their own particular problems in the public sector, and the same problems as well, and the elective surgery wait list is an example of that.

STEVE PRICE: Does it seem that New South Wales has a claim for that amount of money that Reba Meagher quite conveniently leaked to the Sunday newspapers yesterday saying she wanted?

DR CAPOLINGUA: On a population basis, certainly New South Wales, if you say that they're a third of the population in Australia, then they've laid a claim for a third of the $150 million ...

STEVE PRICE: That's pretty simple arithmetic though, isn't it, I mean ...

DR CAPOLINGUA: It is indeed, that's very simple arithmetic, and if you went State by State, and did it proportionally in that manner, the fractions for some States would come out to amounts of $17 or $16 million, and you know, that's a ridiculously small amount of money to say that we need from the Federal Government to help our waiting list problems. States could have easily injected that amount of money themselves, if that was the answer. So, the hundred ...

STEVE PRICE: Maybe the better run States ought to be getting rewarded?

DR CAPOLINGUA: Well, you know, the ...

STEVE PRICE: I mean that might put an incentive in there, Rosanna.

DR CAPOLINGUA: And the Federal Health Minister talks about incentives, and rewards, and indeed penalties I guess, or looking at the restructuring of the system overall, if we're not successful. I think there's a couple of things. We know that we need beds, an increased number of beds across the country, because beds are what enables you to look after patients, to have them admitted appropriately out of the emergency department. You have to help relieve access block, and $150 million doesn't buy you a lot of beds at all.

So this amount of money is, I guess, the initial focus and attention on elective surgery wait lists, but the negotiation of the Australian Healthcare Agreements, and the injection of money into that, is what is going to be the sustainable answer to looking after those patients.

STEVE PRICE: It must be a big challenge for you to hold the new Government to its pre-election promises?

DR CAPOLINGUA: Certainly the AMA has got some very clear ...

STEVE PRICE: Is that your aim?

DR CAPOLINGUA: It's very clear policies around what's needed in health in this country, and we will continue to uphold those clear policies. They've been formulated on what patients need, and what doctors tell us that the patients are needing out there in the sector.

I don't want Australians to become desensitised, to feel that they can accept a lower quality or standard of care in this country. We can afford to deliver good care, continue to deliver good care and better care than we have been. So yes indeed, we'll be pushing to uphold high quality safety, and you know, making healthcare a top priority for this Government, as we have done with Governments before.

STEVE PRICE: The other big challenge of course is we talk a lot about the metropolitan cities, and places like Sydney. Rural Australians are treated like second-class citizens when it comes to healthcare.

DR CAPOLINGUA: Yes, that indeed we know that our rural Australians in fact ...

STEVE PRICE: Pay the same taxes as everybody else.

DR CAPOLINGUA: Yes, they access healthcare less often, and that their morbidity and mortality stats are not as good as those for us in the metropolitan area, so we have to make sure that we focus on getting doctors and high quality health professionals out into the rural sector. And indeed not treat them like second-class citizens. We believe that they should not accept not being able to get to doctors, or not being able to have their hospitals kept open so that the doctors in their region can provide them with services - you know, obstetrics, anaesthetic services, surgical procedures, being able to admit patients and look after them. And those rural public hospitals are part of the public hospital funding that we need to see the Federal Government and States commit to.

STEVE PRICE: Good to talk to you as usual, look forward to catching up on a regular basis through 2008, as we try and get the healthcare that Australians deserve.

DR CAPOLINGUA: Thank you so much.

Ends