Hospitals to be Cleared of Elderly

By Matthew Franklin, Australian

March 25, 2008

Australia

Kevin Rudd will pay the states to clear the nation's hospital wards of 2000 elderly people who are occupying valuable bed-space but who should be in nursing homes.

The Prime Minister will bankroll "transitional" facilities under a $158 million plan to ensure acute-care beds are used by people requiring surgery or treatment for severe medical problems.

Patients undergoing rehabilitation will also be moved to the new beds, which will cost taxpayers 10 times less to operate than acute-care beds in conventional hospital wards.

The move, fulfilling a Labor election promise, will be finalised at the Council of Australian Governments meeting in Adelaide tomorrow, when Mr Rudd will unroll the first results of his attempt to cut waste of public money by promoting greater co-operation between the commonwealth and the states.

But Mr Rudd will also use the meeting to demand more accountability from the states on health, insisting they accept tough performance reporting requirements to demonstrate efficiency in spending commonwealth money.

News of the plans came yesterday as Liberal Party deputy leader Julie Bishop warned that "wall-to-wall" Labor governments would use COAG to conceal inefficiency, not solve the nation's problems.

It also came as Queensland Premier Anna Bligh accepted greater accountability on health and told other states they had "nothing to fear" from publishing details of the relative performances of hospitals.

Some states, particularly NSW, have opposed the commonwealth push for the release of uniform hospital data as having the potential to lead to the creation of hospital "league tables".

The COAG meeting, the second since Labor's election win in November, will be briefed on implementation plans for more than 20 Labor election policies, including an overhaul of commonwealth-state financial relations and a plan to lift Year 12 school completion rates from the present level of 75 per cent to 90 per cent by 2020.

The meeting will also hear details of a wide-ranging attack on business red tape, including simplified occupational health and safety requirements, payroll tax administration and building codes, and the reform of trade and professional qualifications and licensing.

According to Labor policy documents, each night 2300 beds in public hospitals are occupied by elderly people awaiting placement in one of the nation's 2870 nursing homes.

A spokesman for Health Minister Nicola Roxon yesterday confirmed commonwealth and state officials had completed their implementation plan for Labor's aged-care promises and would deliver the proposals to COAG tomorrow.

Labor would deliver the funding - $158 million over five years - for 2000 beds for people involved in the transition between hospital and residential aged care.

Under the plan, the states would use the money to create facilities in existing buildings or in new buildings.

Some of the funding will also be used to support people who return to their homes while awaiting placement.

Running costs per patient would drop because elderly people and those in rehabilitation need less medical care as well as fewer doctors and nurses. 

Labor said last year that the average cost of running an acute-care bed in a hospital was $967 a day, while the average cost to the commonwealth of an aged-care bed was $100 a day.

Government sources said yesterday that if the Howard government had provided enough aged-care beds to meet demand, the states and territories could have cut waste by more than $937million a year, freeing up the money for use on surgical waiting lists or other parts of the health system.

The sources said the lack of co-ordination between the two levels of government created incredible waste, with the states spending 10 times more to care for the aged than could have been spent in a properly funded commonwealth aged care system.

The Government acted last week on a long-term plan to boost nursing home places, offering $300 million in no-interest loans for nursing home operators to build 2500 new nursing home beds around the nation.

Ms Bligh told The Australian last night that 485 beds in Queensland hospitals were occupied every night by people who were awaiting aged-care placement or rehabilitation.

"That's 485 beds that are not being used for acute-care purposes," Ms Bligh said.

"This has an enormous effect on our ability to make progress on elective surgery and to meet the needs for emergency care. I would expect that once those transitional beds are operational, for us to be able to feel a demonstrable difference, and for that to show up in our elective surgery data and in the waiting times that people are waiting."

Ms Bligh said she accepted that Mr Rudd's reforms in health came with a requirement for strict measurement to ensure the money was used efficiently.

"I don't have a problem with that," Ms Bligh said. "I don't expect those measurements and that data will always be comfortable for the state governments, but I think it's important that we monitor. These are massive amounts of money. We need to make sure we are getting good bang for the buck."

Ms Bishop said the existence of "wall-to-wall" Labor governments in Canberra and all states and territories would not deliver greater co-operation, but greater cover-ups.

"The federal Government is saying they support no government debt, and yet they're allowing state governments to drive state budgets into debt," Ms Bishop said.

"Why is federal government debt bad but state government debt good? If the federal Government was serious about tackling inflation, they would call on their state colleagues to reduce the level of state government debt and not find excuses for them."

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