MyHospitals Website - right idea, wrong information
AMA President, Dr Andrew Pesce, said today that the MyHospitals website is a good idea but it would be a much better resource if it supplied more up-to-date and more specific hospital service information to patients.
The website was launched today with emergency department and elective surgery waiting times data from 2009-10, data on outpatient services provided in 2008-09, and bed number information for each hospital in broad categories of less than 50, 50 to 100, and so on.
Dr Pesce said that the AMA is pleased that the Government is moving to provide patients with accessible information about public hospitals via the new website and hopes that truly useful information such as current waiting times and bed occupancy rates would be made available soon.
“The community needs transparent and accurate information on the capacity of public hospitals to meet community demand for their services,” Dr Pesce said.
“The AMA remains concerned about the veracity of the data provided by the States and Territories to the Commonwealth Government for this website.
“It will take some effort and the involvement of local doctors working in hospitals to restore the community’s confidence in this information.
“While the site provides general information about individual hospitals such as the types of services provided, levels of activity, and elective surgery and emergency department waiting times, some of the key data are at least six months old, and other data are around 18 months old.
“It would be more useful if people could get a realistic estimate of how long they would have to wait for elective surgery and how many beds are available in each hospital.
“The AMA is urging the Government to establish a monitoring system called Bedwatch 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.
“Despite its initial shortcomings, MyHospitals will provide a new mechanism for checking that Government funding for public hospital services is actually helping to provide the services that are needed in the community,” Dr Pesce said.
10 December 2010
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