No new hospital beds, streamlined triaging in LNP’s health plan
David Crisafulli will spend more than half a billion dollars to stabilise 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” in Queensland by stopping any new growth in the public surgery waitlist and bringing ambulance ramping below 30 per cent, if the Liberal National Party is elected.
Announcing the $590m package at a chapel on Brisbane’s southside, where he hosted his first “health town hall” in early 2021, the LNP leader said he would match Labor’s pledge to hire an extra 34,200 clinicians by 2032 and stabilise the surgical waitlist, which was at 61,421 people in June.
Ambulance ramping – the percentage of patients who wait longer than 30 minutes to be admitted to hospital after arriving by ambulance – would be reduced to below 30 per cent after four years.
The latest data from Queensland Health shows that between April and June 44.7 per cent of patients were not transferred off stretchers within the target 30 minutes.
“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.
Doctors and health administrators have repeatedly insisted more hospital beds were required to stop bed blockage and improve ambulance ramping, but Mr Crisafulli has pledged no extra beds on top of the 3378 Labor has already budgeted for.
He says the health plan would improve capacity in hospitals by getting patients discharged faster.
“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.”
Visiting the building site for the new Bundaberg Hospital on Monday, Health Minister Shannon Fentiman said the LNP had not come up with a single new idea.
“ I still can’t believe that we have not heard one new idea from the LNP when it comes to health,” she said.
Asked how the LNP’s plan was different from what the Labor government was already doing, Mr Crisafulli said the LNP would ensure transit lounges – a dedicated area that facilitates transfer of patients from emergency departments to wards – “work properly” and require a local clinician to be appointed to every hospital and health service board.
Premier Steven Miles slammed 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.”
Ms Fentiman said her aim was to reduce ambulance ramping to the pre-pandemic level, which was about 28 per cent. 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 Queensland doctors to train as general practitioners. Interstate and overseas health workers are paid a bonus of up to $70,000 to move to Queensland.
Australian Medical Association Queensland president Nick Yim said the LNP’s health policy was a “positive step forward”.
“It mirrors many of the commitments already made by the Labor government, with some ambitious promises,” Dr Yim said.
“We are certainly very encouraged to see such a big commitment of extra funding to our health system, but the devil is in the detail.
“It’s good to see a figure for the number of new doctors, nurses and allied healthcare practitioners we need but we haven’t seen much detail around how we will recruit them.”
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