No new hospital beds, streamlined triaging in LNP’s health plan
David Crisafulli will spend more than half a billion dollars to ‘end the health crisis’ by stabilising the public surgery waiting list if the Liberal National Party is elected.
David Crisafulli will spend more than half a billion dollars to “end the health crisis” by stabilising the public surgery waiting list and cutting ambulance ramping - the percentage of patients admitted to hospital within 30 minutes after arriving and initially being treated on an ambulance stretcher - to below 30 per cent if the Liberal National Party is elected.
Making the $590m announcement at a chapel on Brisbane’s southside, where the LNP hosted his first “health town hall” in early 2021, Mr Crisafulli said he would match Labor’s pledge to hire an extra 34,200 clinicians by 2032.
“The LNP will also free-up hospital beds with streamlined triaging, embedding mental health specialist nurses at triage stations to fast-track mental health patients into hospital treatment,” he said.
“Boosting doctors in acute admissions units over the weekend and delivering expanded transit lounges will save patients from waiting to leave hospital and free-up hospital beds faster.”
Mr Crisafulli’s plan does not include any extra hospital beds on top of the 3378 Labor has already committed to, including 2200 in its hospital expansion program.
Doctors and health administrators have repeatedly insisted more hospital beds were required to stop bed blockage and improve ambulance ramping.
Mr Crisafulli said his plan would also improve capacity in hospitals by getting patients discharged faster.
“I’m very confident this is a plan that will give immediate relief, but also long term relief.”
On his long-awaited hospital ramping target, Mr Crisafulli will give his would-be health minister Ros Bates four years to reduce it to below 30 per cent.
Currently almost half of all patients arriving to public hospitals by ambulance wait longer than the target 30 minutes before being admitted to hospital.
“Ambulance ramping has been at 45 per cent for six months, and this is a plan to take it under 30 per cent and that’s a seismic shift,” Mr Crisafulli said.
Asked how his plan was different from what the Labor government was already doing, Mr Crisafulli said the LNP would make sure transit lounges – a dedicated area that helps transfer patients from emergency departments to wards – “work properly” and require a local clinician to be appointed to every hospital and health service board.
“I’m talking about the people who rely on those decisions, who are going to be put back in charge of driving the future of that hospital,” he said.
“That’s accountability, that’s local knowledge, and that’s the way to heal a health crisis.”
Ambulance ramping and hospital bed block resurfaced as a major policy pressure point for the state government after a series of high-profile deaths. Mr Crisafulli was joined at the announcement on Monday by the daughter of Queensland man Wayne Irving, who suffered a fatal heart attack and died last year after spending three hours ramped outside the Ipswich Hospital because the emergency department was at capacity.
Mr Irving’s daughter, Lauren Handscombe, said she no longer trusted the Labor government to fix public hospitals.
“You think when you put someone in an ambulance to go to a hospital that they’re gonna be okay,” she said.
“(Paramedics) had to sit with my dad and escalate his situation five times and he still never got seen.
“That’s under Labor and I will forever blame this government.”
Visiting the empty building site for the new Bundaberg Hospital on Monday, Labor’s Health Minister Shannon Fentiman attacked the LNP’s long-awaited health policy, accusing the Opposition of planning to cut 1200 hospital beds.
“I don’t know how you expect to improve patient flow and the experience of Queenslanders at our very busy hospitals if you’re going to cut 1200 beds. I still can’t believe that we have not heard one new idea from the LNP when it comes to health,” Ms Fentiman said.
Premier Steven Miles slammed other elements of the LNP’s hospitals policy as “just plain dumb,” saying a requirement to have clinicians on hospital boards was already enshrined in Queensland law.
“They’ve suggested we should look to the (United Kingdom’s) NHS for lessons about how to run our hospitals, which is just madness,” Mr Miles said.
“Half the NHS are applying for jobs in Queensland Health because the NHS is such a basket case … we shouldn’t be looking for the NHS for any lessons whatsoever. In fact, our health system is far, far better.”
In Bundaberg, Labor has promised to build a $1.2bn new hospital, due to open in 2027. Former Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and local MP Tom Smith – who holds the seat on the state’s narrowest margin of 0.01 per cent – announced the site as part of the 2020 election campaign.
But four years on the site is still bare with giant diggers and machinery all that sits on the cleared land.
Health Minister Ms Fentiman said her aim was to reduce ambulance ramping to pre-pandemic levels.
That figure was about 28 per cent of patients not being moved from an ambulance stretcher in half-an-hour. The government’s long-time target has been to reduce that to just 10 per cent of patients.
Labor also promised to extend its scheme to attract more GPs until 2030, allowing $40,000 payments for QLD doctors to train as general practitioners.
Interstate and overseas health workers are paid a bonus of up to $70,000 to move to Queensland.
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