Brumby’s Dud Health Plan No Cure for Victoria’s Hospitals

John Brumby’s ‘new’ ten-point health plan highlights Labor’s atrocious failure in the health sector and is neither new nor innovative, Shadow Minister for Health Helen Shardey said today.

“This ten-point plan is a muddled rehash of old announcements and shows that John Brumby is reduced to begging for more money from Canberra to camouflage Labor’s ineptitude on health,” Mrs Shardey said.

“The truly desperate nature of Labor’s ‘comprehensive reform proposal’ is illustrated by the call for the rolling out of an activity-based funding approach to hospitals across Australia when Victoria has had an activity-based funding approach in place for the last 15 years.

“John Brumby’s plea for the Commonwealth to provide at least one Medicare-funded bulk- billing GP service in emergency departments for non-emergency patients is the third policy direction his government has taken on this issue.

“The previous Coalition Federal Government and the current Labor Government were and are in support of co-located GP clinics in hospitals with very busy emergency departments.

“And Labor proposed the establishment of super clinics in the last election to ease the burden on emergency departments.

“John Brumby’s sudden realisation of the need to boost public subsidies and public provision of dental services, particularly for those most in need, reveals that Victorian Labor is opposed to the Federal decision to scrap the Medicare Dental Scheme which allowed such a subsidy in the first place.

“Instead of arrogantly strutting the national stage, John Brumby should focus on helping sick Victorians get health care and fund desperately-needed hospital beds,” Mrs Shardey said.

Brumby’s Poor Planning Fails New Victorian Mums

This week’s Auditor-General’s report on the new Royal Women’s Hospital reveals another shocking failure by the Brumby Government to plan and invest in the future, Shadow Minister for Health Helen Shardey said today.

“Labor has an abysmal record in forward planning for major projects, and this time new Victorian mums are the losers,” Mrs Shardey said.

“The Brumby Government refused to invest for our growing population and build a new hospital which could cope with future demand, despite having the option to do so under the contract for construction.”

The Auditor General found that: “In light of the increased maternity demand, which became more obvious during construction, it would have been prudent for DHS and DTF to conduct a cost/benefit analysis of the option to add extra floors during the construction phase… However, we saw no evidence of any consideration by DHS during the construction period to exercise the design option to add extra floors.”

“The Metropolitan Health Strategy revealed that the Royal Women’s Hospital was projected to treat 24,652 patients in 2006/07. Theis target was exceeded a year before, in 2005/06, with the Royal Women’s Hospitals treating a staggering 32,475 patients.

“It is astounding to think that at no stage did the Brumby Government conduct consider the option of adding extra floors to the hospital while it was still being built, even though it was clear that they made a serious error in planning for the new hospital,” Mrs Shardey said.

The Auditor-General also found that: “building the additional floors during initial construction would have been far more cost effective and less intrusive to the hospital’s operations, than expanding in the future. Any short-term savings made by avoiding expansion now, will likely be invalidated by much higher costs in the future if a decision is made to expand the new RWH.”

“Instead, the government plans to address the increase in maternity demand by using existing already overburdened metropolitan hospitals,” Mrs Shardey said.

“It is clear that the Brumby Government was not interested in building a Royal Women’s Hospital which would treat Victorians for decades to come.

“Victorians deserve a government which is willing to make an investment now for our future, not a government that sticks its head in the sand while our hospitals crumble,” Mrs Shardey said.

Report Reveals Hospitals In Crisis

The release of the Your Hospitals report today confirms Victorian hospitals are in crisis and are not a priority of the Brumby Government, with the system buckling under the pressure of the government’s inaction, said Helen Shardey, Shadow Minister for Health.

“There are 39,502 patients on the waiting list and 85,712 patients endured more than four hours waiting in the ED waiting room before being treated and discharged,” said Mrs Shardey.

“Each one of these reported figures represents a Victorian in pain, seeking treatment, yet they are only a small part of a continuing crisis. The state of Victorian hospitals has been rapidly declining and waiting lists are only increasing.

“The Brumby Government is clearly embarrassed by these figures, especially the failure to meet six out of the nine benchmarks in key critical areas, so it has chosen to release this damning report on the day of the Federal Budget,” said Mrs Shardey.

State-wide, the Your Hospitals report from July to December 2007 reveals:
· 39,502 patients are on the elective surgery waiting list, an increase of 2,305 patients since December 2006
· hospitals were on bypass for 3.7 per cent of the time, more than double the previous year
· 45,022 patients in the last six months waited on trolleys in emergency departments for more than eight hours, an increase of 9,242 patients from the previous year
· 85,712 patients in the last six months waited more than four hours in an ED waiting room before being treated and discharged, an increase of 9,959 patients from the previous year
· 12,693 patients in the last six months categorised as emergency cases waited longer than 10 minutes for treatment in an ED, an increase of 4,285 patients
· 54,588 patients in the last six months categorised as urgent waited more than 30 minutes before being treated, an increase of 11,770 patients
· 2,000 fewer elective surgeries undertaken than the previous year
· the non-urgent surgery waiting time increased by 18 days on the previous year
· the semi-urgent surgery waiting time increased four days on the previous year.

“These figures reveal only some of the patients languishing on hospital waiting lists, while tens of thousands are kept secret by the Brumby Government on unreported lists,” said Mrs Shardey.

“The only way to understand the full extent of pressures on hospitals and patients waiting for treatment is for the Brumby Government to fully disclose all their secret waiting lists.

“There has been a systematic failure by the Brumby Government in planning for the future of Victoria’s health system and hospitals. The report reveals hospitals are under pressure from all areas.

“The simple truth is Victorian hospitals are at maximum capacity and cannot cope with increased demand and an ageing population.

“The Brumby Government has severely under-estimated hospital demand, creating a chronic shortfall in funding. In so doing, they have placed Victorian hospitals under unsustainable pressure.

“This Labor government is out of touch with the basic health needs of Victorians. Even with an enormous State Budget tax windfall, Victorian hospitals have still been massively short-changed, with no major additional beds in the system,” said Mrs Shardey.

Victorians wait years for dental treatment

“Dental figures published in the latest Your Hospitals Report shows that Victorians are being forced to wait years for dental treatment with the average waiting time across all public dental clinics at 22.79 months!” says Helen Shardey, Shadow Minister for Health.

“These figures exceed the 22 months projected in the State Budget,” says Mrs Shardey. “An average wait of two years for treatment is unacceptable. Many rural patients are being forced to wait between four and five years!”

According to the Australian Dental Association’s Garry Pearson: “Over half of the rural dental clinics experienced worse results, with 18 suffering an average deterioration of 4.61 months between June and December 2007.”

“The Government has no plans to reduce dental waiting times or dental emergencies which account for more than half the treatments,” said Mrs Shardey. “The State Budget shows the ratio of emergency to dental care is 53:47 which means that more than 50 percent of patients are being treated as emergency cases because they have been forced to wait too long for basic dental care.

“If people were treated in a timely manner their treatment would be much simpler, the fact that they are left languishing in pain often means more complex treatment needs to be undertaken and sometimes results in tooth extraction.”

Of the 58 clinics for which data is available a whopping 30 of them had a deteriorating times for access to general dental care with an average of 3.67 months deterioration.

Some of the worst areas include:

General dental care dentures
Daylesford 44 months (up five months) 21 months (up six months)
Colac 41 months (up six months) 29 months (up six months)
Belmont 24 months (up two months) 29 months (up five months)
Hoppers Crossing 27 months (up one month) 48 months (up two months)
Clayton 11 months (unchanged) 36 months (up four months)
Sunbury 19 months (unchanged) 30 months (up five months)
Lilydale 18 months (up one month) 27 months (up five months)

”With no plan to change the average 22 month waiting time for dental treatment, the Government seems content to believe that this is a reasonable time for Victorians to wait in agony for basic dental care,” says Mrs Shardey.

“How committed is Mr Brumby to helping Victorians when he has increased spending on dental services by a mere one percent?” asks Mrs Shardey.

Labor’s Kidney Failure

A Labor election promise of a 12-chair haemodialysis centre to be established at Maroondah Hospital by the end of 2007 is still no-where near completion, says Helen Shardey, Shadow Minister for Health.

“The haemodialysis centre was announced by the then Minister for Health, Bronwyn Pike on October 12, 2006 just weeks before the last State election and almost two years on, patients in Eastern metropolitan are still waiting for the government to lay the first brick,” said Mrs Shardey.

“In a media release Ms Pike said we would expect that around 48 patients would be able to utilise the new centre once it is up and running by the end of 2007.

“We are now almost six months into 2008 and all that is visible at Maroondah Hospital is a vacant lot.

“The Brumby Government has not set a completion date and yesterday in Parliament the embattled Health Minister skirted around answering the question on the haemodialysis centre.

“Minister Andrews was clearly kept in the dark on this project and appeared to be unaware of any commitment that his government had made in 2006, reinforced by his flustered response in Parliament.

“The state government’s inaction and broken promise is causing increased stress on patients living in the outer eastern suburbs needing dialysis, who will continue to drive for hours to access their medical treatment.

“This facility was supposed to make the lives of patients from Maroondah, Yarra Ranges and surrounding areas easier, offering them the convenience of access to dialysis services closer to home, but clearly the government’s priority is self-preservation.

“In what is fast becoming the Brumby Government’s trademark of a glitzy launch with extra spin and not much substance, the embattled Minister launched Kidney Week with the usual fan-fair, neglecting the real day to day crisis faced by Victorians,” said Mrs Shardey.

The location of the vacant block earmarked for the haemodialysis centre is located in Ware Cresent, Ringwood East opposite Maroondah Hospital.

Brumby compromises patient safety

The damning Auditor-General’s report into Patient Safety in Public Hospitals slams the Brumby Government for not doing enough to ensure prompt delivery and development of a clinical governance policy and integrated incident system which would effectively reduce incidents in Victorian hospitals, said Shadow Minister for Health Helen Shardey.

“The report reveals one in ten patients admitted to a hospital in Victoria are harmed as a result of their admission and almost 50 per cent of these incidents are avoidable,” said Mrs Shardey.

“The Brumby Government has failed to develop a state-wide system to monitor patient safety, which would reduce incidents of patient harm in hospitals.

“Despite a previous audit of patient safety in public hospitals in 2005 and a departmental review of quality and safety last year, there has been a distinct failure to implement all the recommendations by the state government.

“Delivery of the project by the Brumby Government is 2010, too long a wait for Victorians harmed in hospitals, and going by their previous track record of delivering on projects, Victorians can expect a delivery time blow out.

“The Auditor-General advised the Labor Government to commit to a course of action and follow it through in a timely manner and before 2010.

“Victoria is the only state in Australia that does not have an incident monitoring system in place and the duplication at all levels of the current system makes it unworkable,” said Mrs Shardey.

While the Auditor-General recognises there is some data gathered through sentinel events, infection rates and pressure ulcers, this data represents only a small portion of patient safety data and the Auditor-General called for a process that measures the system as a whole.

“Apart from the unnecessary trauma to the patients and their families, the cost of these clinical incidents is more than $500 million a year,” said Mrs Shardey.

“The safety of patients in public hospitals is of paramount importance and the Brumby Government is failing in its duty of care by not establishing recommended quality of care processes.

“It is important the Victorian community has confidence our hospital system will provide the best quality of care possible and the Brumby Government must ensure systems are in place to deliver such care,” says Mrs Shardey.