Mike O’Connor: Queensland Health needs to stop blaming COVID and fix this crisis

It’s time for Queensland’s Health Minister’s to stop blaming our health crisis on COVID-19. This problem has been building for years and we all know it, writes Mike O’Connor.

We are all going to get old so will someone please pass on this inevitability to Queensland Health.

Does the odd honourable member experience a creak from protesting knees as they lever themselves out of their well-padded chairs?

They’re a clue, an undeniable consequence of the passage of time so please pass the message on to Health Minister D’Ath – Queenslanders are growing old and are making increasing demands on the health system.

For decades, statisticians have been warning of the looming impact of the ageing baby boomer generation and the state’s steady increase in population on the hospital system.

Millions of words have been written on the tsunami that has been building, all of which have been blithely ignored. Suddenly, with the wave about to break, realisation has dawned. There’s a crisis!

What to do? Look for a scapegoat, of course. Who to blame? Covid? Yes, of course. Covid, which has been with us for all of 15 months, is responsible for the disgraceful state of a health system which has been regressing for decades.

It was left to the Australian Medical Association’s Queensland president Chris Perry to state the screamingly obvious when he said: “We have to deal with the reality that the population is booming and ageing, and hospital demand is only going to increase.”

Health Minister D’Ath took a different view saying that COVID-19 had created pressure on health systems “not just in Queensland, but across the country” which had resulted in the hospital system facing “unprecedented demand.”

What else to blame apart from Covid? The dreadful Campbell Newman government, of course, with Minister D’Ath saying that during its time in power the LNP did not build or plan to build a single hospital. The problem with this, the default reaction of the government whenever it is called to account, is that Newman was only in power for three years whereas Labor has been in power in Queensland for 27 of the last 32 years.

In any case, it’s not the point. This is not about the political health of the Palaszczuk government but the physical and mental health of Queenslanders and the level of care that the state government is honour-bound to provide.

“The demand on our busy public hospital network is increasing year on year” complained Minister D’Ath recently. Of course it is. Did the Minister seriously expect it to fall as the population increased and the Baby Boomers reached retirement age?

The political band-aids are now being applied and in the finest traditions of Queensland Health, they are too little and too late.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Health Minister Yvette D'Ath speak with patient Caitlin Sippel at the Mater Private hospital in Springfield, after the government announced it would deliver 174 new public hospital beds to the hospital. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jono Searle

The government has just announced it will spend $100 million on the health system which will deliver 65 new beds, a token gesture when measured against the $3 billion the AMA says is needed to fix the system.

By its reckoning, Queensland needs another 1500 more hospital beds and a huge increase in staffing levels in intensive care, mental health and general wards, describing hospital emergency departments as being stuck “in this vicious cycle of crisis upon crisis.”

The mental health system is described by practitioners as being “on the brink of collapse” with the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists criticising the Palaszczuk government for having the lowest per capita expenditure on mental health in Australia.

These are not people with a political agenda who are seeking a quick headline or personal aggrandisement but dedicated professionals who are confronted with the consequences of a failed mental health system every day.

Palliative care professionals say that due to state government inaction, thousands of Queenslanders are dying in unnecessary pain every year with Catholic Health Australia, Mater Group, St Vincent’s Health Australia and Palliative Care Queensland all saying that the amount of money being spent falls woefully and sadly short of what is needed.

This, surely, is serious stuff. People are dying in pain because their government has let them down.

Minister D’Ath says an the government will build seven ”satellite” hospitals in southeast Queensland.

No one is sure what a satellite hospital is apart from it not being a real hospital. They are another hastily conjured band-aid, a public relations fix for a critical shortfall in medical care.

When it comes to grand gestures and distractions, however, the government is a ball of energy, springing into action at the possibility of staging a football match or when making pronouncements that reek of populism such as the Premier’s recent proposal for a national summit on issues impacting women.

That’s lovely but where’s the money for the hospitals, for the mentally ill and for the sick and the dying? Let’s have a summit on that.