Growing population but shrinking hospitals? -- that's government!

Australian public hospitals show the way

Queensland has almost 500 fewer hospital beds than when the Beattie Government took office in 1998, figures released late yesterday show. Health Minister Stephen Robertson provided the data following questions this week and admitted he had given incorrect information to Parliament on the subject. He said the information supplied to him by his department about bed numbers at the end of last financial year had inadvertently included neonatal cots in the count. So rather than 9994 available beds as Mr Robertson told Parliament, the figure was actually 7017. The number compares with 7515 when Labor took office.

Mr Robertson said bed numbers had been reduced because of health care models that predicted a reduced reliance on overnight hospital stays. "Advice from hospital experts at the time was that less beds would be needed in future because many people requiring simple surgery would be in hospital for a matter of hours instead of occupying beds for several days." Premier Peter Beattie acknowledged last month that the modelling had been flawed.

The Opposition this week attacked the Government for promising to open an extra 66 beds to address problems in emergency departments, when it had shut down hundreds since coming to office. Liberal leader Bob Quinn last night said the figures highlighted why patients struggled to get their surgery on time in Queensland hospitals. "Under this Government, there's been a loss of 500 beds and at one stage they were actually 800 beds down," Mr Quinn said. "When you combine the closure of beds with the exodus of doctors out of the system, you see why people can't get their operation on time, while the waiting lists have blown out and why emergency departments have been closed. "All of this points to how badly the hospitals have been managed by Labor in the past seven years. "This loss of 500 beds has occurred at the same time that Queensland's population has increased by 500,000."

Mr Robertson said the number of available beds had also declined under the Coalition government, falling by 149 in 2« years. But he said bed numbers was "a very poor measure of hospital system performance, because it is subject to significant estimation error". "There is also no way of verifying data from earlier years to determine whether current definitions were rigorously followed.

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL hospitals and health insurance schemes should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the very poor and minimal regulation. Both Australia and Sweden have large private sector health systems with government reimbursement for privately-provided services so can a purely private system with some level of government reimbursement or insurance for the poor be so hard to do?

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