Qld election 2024: David Crisafulli’s $590m health pledge

Ambulance ramping will be below 30 per cent by the end of the LNP’s first term in office and the elective surgery waiting list will stop growing after the first year, Opposition Leader David Crisafulli has vowed.

Opposition Leader David Crisafulli on Monday. Picture: Liam Kidston

• Editor’s view: Blurted-out pledges

Ambulance ramping will be below 30 per cent by the end of the LNP’s first term in office and the elective surgery waiting list will stop growing after the first year, Opposition Leader David Crisafulli has vowed.

In a day when both Labor and the LNP outlined plans for health, Mr Crisafulli said Queenslanders would hold the LNP accountable at the 2028 election if those targets were not met.

Against the backdrop of a community hall at the Mount Gravatt showgrounds in the Brisbane electorate of Mansfield, Mr Crisafulli released the LNP’s $590m “detailed” health plan with a promise to diagnose, treat and cure Queensland’s health crisis.

The LNP’s health services plan – described as a “seismic shift” five times by Mr Crisafulli – takes in major planks of existing government strategy, including a 10-year workforce plan and the entire existing ­infrastructure program.

It means the LNP will deliver just as many hospital beds as a Labor government and add the same number of clinicians – 34,200, including 18,781 nurses and midwives – to the system by 2032.

But Mr Crisafulli is adamant the LNP can do things differently and free up capacity in the system to make more hospital beds available.

“I’m very confident that this is a plan that can give immediate relief, but also long-term relief, and we’re willing to back it up with proof,” he said.

“By the end of the term, the Queensland ambulance ramping figure will be under 30 per cent for first time in ­almost half a decade.

“As part of it, we will roll out a road map with yearly stepping stones to get there.

“Queensland will hold us accountable if we can’t get it to the figure I’ve outlined.”

Lauren Hansford lost her father in the state’s ramping crisis. Picture: Liam Kidston

Premier Steven Miles, in Bundaberg where a new $1.2bn, 121-bed hospital is being built, announced 2500 more beds to bring the total number of new beds to 3400.

He slammed the LNP plan as “plain dumb” and argued the government was already doing many of the things ­announced.

Health Minister Shannon Fentiman declined to match the LNP’s ambulance-ramping target, but said her goal was to ensure it returned to pre-Covid levels “as quickly as possible”.

Prior to the pandemic, about 28 per cent of patients were waiting more than 30 minutes to get into the emergency department when they arrived by ambulance. As of the end of June, that figure had been 45 per cent.

Also in June 61,421 people were on the elective surgery waitlist in Queensland – the highest total ever recorded.

Concurrently, the health system treated 37,682 elective surgery patients – also the highest number on record.

Mr Crisafulli pledged that, under the LNP, elective ­surgery waiting lists would not rise after the 12 months following the release of the figures for this quarter.

“We will not have more rises once we get through the first year,” he said.

“It will be a reduction. It must be a reduction.”

The LNP has also promised to reinstate maternity services at Biloela and Cooktown, though it has set no deadline on those pledges.

Its plan also includes a commitment to upgrade the digital mapping technology to improve hospital workflows and maximise availability of hospital beds.

Doctors in acute admission units would be offered better pay – equal to 25 per cent loading – to work weekends so ­patients can be discharged seven days a week.

The LNP has also promised to install nine CT and six MRI machines in existing satellite hospitals – which they will ­rename at a cost yet to be ­determined – and regional hospitals.

Widower Stephen Couder with Opposition health spokeswoman Ros Bates. Picture: Liam Kidston

The state government is maintaining its attack on the LNP’s plan for satellite hospitals. “They still haven’t committed to the new satellite hospitals in regional Queensland,” Ms Fentiman said.

“Where’s their funding for the additional satellite hospitals that we have committed to this election?

“Some of our satellite hospitals, of course, ­already have that equipment.”

The Queensland Nurses and Midwives Union, which has launched its strongest anti-LNP campaign yet, slammed the plan for lacking detail.

“Today’s announcement by the LNP fails to acknowledge the crucial role nurses and midwives could play in delivering high-quality care, including their role in the assessment, treatment and discharge of patients,” union secretary Sarah Beaman said.

“Enabling nurses and midwives to practice at their full scope would achieve considerable statewide improvements to patient flow, bed availability and ramping.”

Mr Crisafulli made the announcement alongside Lauren Hansford, whose father Wayne Irving died in the back of an ambulance amid the ramping crisis.

She said paramedics repeatedly escalated her father’s case but he died waiting to be seen by doctors.

Widower Stephen Couder also spoke at the announcement, saying his wife of 46 years died in his arms in 2021 while waiting for an ambulance that never arrived due to a known system error that did not register their street address correctly.

“I fully support David and his vision for the Queensland health services,” Mr Couder said.