Hospital funding quotes[1]
The 2014 budget did
serious damage to Commonwealth-state relations and the confidence with which
states could plan and manage health services. It did this by abrogating an
agreement about public hospital funding which had been signed by governments of
all political persuasions and unilaterally imposing a new funding model on the
states.
Dr Stephen Duckett,
Director, Health Program, Grattan Institute
The annual
hospitals budget, from New South Wales, is about $20 billion. That is one
year's salary, effectively...You can close the system for a year or you can fund
to meet demand...$18.3 billion so it is, virtually, a year's New South Wales
hospital budget worth of cuts.
Dr Andrew McDonald,
paediatrician, Campbelltown Hospital
If implemented, the
return to a population based funding arrangement would dismantle cost-sharing
arrangements...in service delivery terms this lost funding commitment equates to
the volume of services that at least two tertiary hospitals the size of
Melbourne Health [which runs the Royal Melbourne Hospital]...could be expected to
produce over that 10-year period.
Ms Kym Peake, Acting
Secretary of the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services
What we know as an
industry is that when you put more out-of-pocket costs for patients, patients
choose not to come for their examination.
Ms Bronwyn Nicholson,
General Manager of the I-MED Radiology Network, Queensland
So you have longer
waiting times and people are not seen acutely when they should be seen, so they
are much sicker when they are seen, and then you end up having to fly them out.
It is just a revolving door.
Dr Stephanie Trust,
Kununurra Medical Centre
Removing
600 hospital beds; or
- Closing
an entire hospital; or
- The
cost of employing 3000 nurses; or
- Doubling
elective surgery waiting times.
South
Australian Government
The cohort of patients are the complex elective
surgery that needs to be performed, not the day cases—they have been raced
through. The complex cases are still waiting. There are unacceptable time
frames in Tasmania. People are often in pain, stopping the quality of life... So
we actually have fewer beds in Tasmania than the average across the country.
That is due to budget cuts... We also have the longest elective surgery waiting
times. So you can see why we frame it as the perfect storm.
Mrs Neroli Ellis, Branch Secretary, Australian Nursing and Midwifery
Federation, Tasmanian Branch
The Commonwealth
Government’s abandonment of the National Health Reform Agreement has cut $248
million from what we expected to receive for our hospitals over the next four
years. In this Budget we have chosen not to pass on this Commonwealth cut and
send our hospitals into chaos.
ACT Treasurer, Mr Andrew
Barr MLA
Northern Territory
hospitals are already performing below national benchmarks, mainly due to the
high demand for acute care. The majority of hospital patients in the Northern
Territory are Aboriginal, so reducing access to high quality hospital services
will hurt Aboriginal people the most.
Mr John Paterson, Chief
Executive Officer, Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance Northern Territory
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