[Opinion]- Australian Hospitals at Breaking Point.
[Opinion]- Australian Hospitals at Breaking Point.
November 21 2021 | By Christian Brown | In #THEPLACARD
Prime Minister Morrison accused Qld Premier Anna Palaszczuk of “holding the federal government to ransom” over hospital funding, in response to Qld border closures.
I believe a state vaccination rate of 80% alone is not enough. Queensland’s hospital system needs to have the capacity to ensure Queenslander’s are covid safe and an increase in hospital funding would go towards ensuring the hospital system can meet the demands of an increase in covid case numbers. The issue of hospital funding is very personal for me, my mother passed away 21 October 2021, in a Qld regional hospital at capacity where I saw people denied admission due to a lack of nursing staff. The continual flashing of patient call signs was evidencing enough of the shortage of nursing staff. I had to run to the nurse’s station when they did not answer the alert signal to tell my mother’s pain medication had run out, to find the nurse station unattended. Why? Because they did not have enough staff to cover, while they made up the pain relief medicine, I assumed it would have been made prior. I guess there is only so much they can do with the reduced nursing staff. My story is not unique, four other Qld hospitals reached capacity in October, breaking the glass and simultaneously sound code yellow alarms throughout Qld in Cairns, Townsville, Mackay and Mt Isa. The College of Emergency Medicine stated that patients have died due to capacity issues in Qld. Dr Sandy Donald, senior vice president of Together Queensland, said he had never seen all four hospitals call code yellows at the same time.
The Qld premier has rallied saying "This is not a unique problem to Queensland".
Since the closure of domestic and international borders, regional areas have been experiencing a decline in nursing staff numbers. How will the Australian healthcare sector respond to a covid -19 outbreak? Studies have estimated that Australia will have a shortage of 85,000 nurses by 2025, while the average age of nurses is also rising with 25% of registered nurses aged 55 or older. This scenario has become all too real for WA’s capacity to manage a COVID-19 outbreak being questioned, in the wake of the State suspending non-urgent, multi-day category two and three procedures, comes amid overcrowding and staff shortages in the State’s public hospitals for weeks and is becoming routine, with the state forced to suspend some elective surgeries, for the third tie during the pandemic and has meant some nurses have retired, some moving on to alternative work indefinitely. Emergency doctors have voiced their concerns over the reduction in nursing staff ratios as outrageous and should not be accepted, with emergency department nurses saying patient safety is at risk.
Federal government cuts to the hospital budget were revealed 5 years ago in 2016, when National Health Reporter Sue Dunlevy for News Corp Australia Network revealed $57 Billion of cuts to federal government cuts to hospitals. Victoria Public hospitals will lose more than $1 billion in federal funding next year — the loss of 20,000 nurses and the pain does not stop there, with a $93 million funding cut announced in the federal budget, Vic Health Minister Martin Foley claims there will be fewer nurses and doctors in the state’s hospitals to care for the sick, replicating the crisis in WA. An exasperated Mr Foley was stunned that federal funding would be cut during the pandemic.
"It means less services, less nurses, less doctors, and less support at a time when the entire Australian community has placed unprecedented demand levels on those same services," Mr Foley said of the cuts.
With NSW, public hospitals will lose $371 million in funding next year and $17.6 billion over eight years whereas in Victoria, public hospitals will lose $272 million next year and $13.5 billion over eight years. In Queensland, public hospitals will lose $199 million next year and $10.7 billion over eight years. The cuts didn’t end there, with leaked documents to NSW Labor and the Herald in 2019, revealing the NSW state government plan to cut the state’s health budget, informing Health districts across the state "NSW Health will collectively be required to achieve cost savings of $252 million", with $150 million to come from local health districts, $67 million from ambulance, pathology and HealthShare, and $35 million from the Ministry of Health and the Cancer Institute. These cuts alone weaken the NSW Health system’s capacity to respond to a health crisis and are compounded by Parliamentary budget office calculations prepared for a Senate committee for the first time showing the state-by-state impact of those cuts.
A $57 billion cut from the federal hospital budget over eight years will be catastrophic for Australia’s hospital system.
“As hospital capacity shrinks, doctors won’t be able to get their patients into hospital or keep them there to receive the critical care they require,” AMA president Professor Brian Owler said.
Sth Australia, public hospitals will lose $103 million next year and $4.1 billion over eight years and in the Northern Territory, public hospitals will lose $30 million next year and $777 million over eight years.
In Tasmania, public hospitals will lose $20 million next year and $1.1 billion over eight years.
Federal Government funding for the States and territory hospital system began in 1945 and was bound by five-yearly agreements, with the Federal Government and with the introduction of Medicare in 1984, all Australians were entitled to free public treatment exposing the States and Territories to rising hospital costs. States were compensated through higher Commonwealth contributions, still negotiated through five-yearly agreements. Disagreements on the level of funding to individual states and territories were common. With the inception of the National cabinet, Prime Minister Scott Morrison sought to keep National cabinet discussions confidential through freedom of information laws. But a Federal Court Judge has ruled that the National cabinet is not protected by freedom of information laws and comes as welcome news, given there are fresh concerns around the reopening of borders and languishing health system will be able to meet the demands of rising covid case numbers, with Health Department Secretary Brendan Murphy, seeking advice from health experts around the capacity of the health system to cope with rising covid cases. With the findings to be released at National Cabinet.