DOCTORS REFORM SOCIETY

DRS

Media Release

Thursday, 1 November 2007

HOWARD STILL HAS NOTHING FOR PUBLIC HOSPITALS

 

 “Yesterday’s announcement by the Prime Minister that 50 new ‘family medical centres’ will be set up to take the load off our under-resourced emergency departments is a sad indication of how ignorant the Federal Government is about the problems in emergency departments,” said Dr Tim Woodruff, President, Doctors Reform Society. “They will do nothing for our emergency departments.”

“GP type patients do not lead to the problems in emergency departments”, said Dr Woodruff, “Research consistently shows that the single major factor causing problems in emergency departments is a lack of beds in the hospitals for the patients who need admission to go to. There are no beds for them because

1. The Federal Government has admitted underfunding the public hospital system compared to the States by $2 billion per year

2. The Federal Government has not funded adequate GP based primary care to prevent people getting so sick they need admission to hospital unnecessarily. A 2007 Federal Government study suggested this accounted for 8.7% of admissions.

3. The Federal Government has not provided enough Aged Care places for patients waiting in expensive hospital beds

4. The States have not funded hospitals adequately to match the growing demand despite doubling their funding over the last four years”.

“Howard and Abbott remain in denial about their responsibility for the plight of public hospitals,” said Dr Woodruff.

“We’ve heard it all before: ‘we will take the load off public hospitals with the PHI rebate’. It didn’t work, and now the same claim is being made: ‘we will take the load off emergency departments’. It won’t work until there is a re-investment directly in public hospitals rather than in private hospitals and personal tax cuts, and new investment in providing adequate primary GP based care and adequate Aged Care.”