Extra medics, beds to ease strain on health

Western Australia will pump almost $2bn of extra funding into its health system as it looks to ease the strain that has plagued its hospitals in recent months.

Western Australia will pump ­almost $2bn of extra funding into its health system as it looks to ease the strain that has plagued its hospitals in recent months.

Premier Mark McGowan and Health Minister Roger Cook on Sunday pledged to deliver another 332 hospital beds – including 109 mental-health beds – and promised to recruit 100 new doctors and 500 new nurses.

The government also promised another $88m for additional nursing and administration staff at the Perth Children’s Hospital. The death of seven-year-old Aishwarya Aswath at the hospital earlier this year, after she waited almost two hours for help, prompted a public outcry and ­exposed shortcomings in the hospital’s practices.

Ambulance ramping levels have also hit unprecedented highs this year, peaking at 5246 hours in June, and have consistently been at multiples of the 1030 hours-per-month level that Mr Cook ­described as a “crisis” when he was in opposition.

The government has been under mounting pressure in ­recent months to use its growing budget surplus – the product of ­record-high royalty revenues from the state’s iron ore industry – to improve its health system.

Mr McGowan said the extra spending on staffing levels and ­infrastructure in the health system were the result of his government’s financial management.

“We haven’t had the dire ­finances that basically all the other states and the commonwealth have, and that’s because we actually took financial management seriously when we came to office, and we made sure that we ran our state’s finances very carefully, as opposed to our predecessors and that allows us the capacity now to invest in this way,” he said.

The strain in the health system in recent months has come ­despite WA being largely untouched by the pandemic. While the feared hospitalisations due to Covid-19 have not materialised in WA, the closure of international borders has cut off the supply of foreign doctors and nurses that underpinned the health system.

Mr Cook said international studies had shown the pandemic had deterred people from engaging with GPs and hospitals last year, which had led to an increase in the frequency and acuity of hospital presentations this year.

“Every health minister in Australia is feeling the heat from dealing with Covid and dealing with the unprecedented demand on our hospitals,” he said.

“We are very fortunate in Western Australia that we have managed the state’s finances properly and as a result of that we are able to put significant investment as part of the budget process to try to address the situation.”

About $1.3bn will go towards major redevelopments and expansions of Joondalup Health Campus, Fremantle Hospital, Bunbury Regional Hospital, Peel Health Campus, Laverton Hospital, Tom Price Hospital, and Newman Health Service over the next four years.

Opposition health spokeswoman Libby Mettam said it was clear WA was desperately playing catch-up in the health system. “After running down the health system in its first term, we have a health system which is on its knees,” she said.

“The government had no choice but to make this announcement after their mismanagement was condemned by key health advocates and protests by health workers who feared for ­patient safety.”

Australian Medical Association state president Mark ­Duncan-Smith accused the government of double-dipping, noting that some funding commit­ments had been announced previously. He said it was important that the additional funding was spent on frontline services, and not on the health bureaucracy, and warned that WA had been operating with the lowest number of hospital beds per capita.

“In the short-term, I don’t think there’s going to be much significant impact at all,” he said.