OAKESHOTT INDEPENDENT
'SURGE BED' COMMENTS BORDERING ON THE ABSURD, SAYS OAKESHOTT
ABC RADIO TODAY
Health service rejects elective surgery claims
ABC-31 January 2008
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/01/31/2150916.htm
The North Coast Area Health Service says a Government plan to reclassify some beds at New South Wales north coast hospitals will not lead to a blow-out in elective surgery waiting lists.
The head of the Grafton Base Hospital's Medical Staff Council, Alan Tyson, voiced that concern yesterday.
Dr Tyson says the plan to convert more than 80 beds at 14 north coast public hospitals into 'surge' beds for seriously ill patients could result in fewer beds for elective patients.
But the health service chief executive officer, Chris Crawford, says the plan will actually free up more beds for surgery.
"By treating mild and chronic patients in the community and through the Hospital in the Home Program we can actually free-up beds that are occupied, they will become surge beds," he said.
"So we can in fact accommodate the seriously ill patients in surge beds and so not have to cancel surgery."
Independent MP for Port Macquarie, Robert Oakeshott, said the plan to free up hospital beds by 'treating people at home' (see attached ABC comment) was up there with the most absurd comments on healthcare he had ever heard.
"People are in hospital for a reason, and we have lived through an era where 'efficiency gains' have made sure those that are in hospital are genuinely in need, Mr Oakeshott said.
"For a strategy to be cooked up that now says hospital beds will be freed up by treating these same people in their homes simply defies logic, and denies the role that a hospital plays in our community, Mr Oakeshott said.
"Are we truly to believe doctors and nurses are going to be driving from home to home treating people as if they were in hospital? Is this new category of bed called a 'surge bed' really anything other than what it is now - a bed for sick people?, said Mr Oakeshott.
Today, our office spoke with Mrs Amy Longworth*, who had surgery cancelled for the second time. This time she had the cannula in ready to go when the cancellation occurred. She informs us that four other cancellations occurred yesterday as well.
"This attempt to kick people out of hospital to free up beds will fail, and is an illogical, and clinically flawed model of health care. With 28,000 presentations to an emergency department at Port Macquarie Base Hospital in 2007, when it was built for 13,000 maximum in 1992, suggests a deeper strategy of major capital works is needed, not a shifting of some deckchairs on the health service titanic.
31 January 2008