Study Blames Hospitals For Waiting Lists
THE SUNDAY AGE
Saturday October 8, 1994
MORE than 56,000 patients had their surgery cancelled last year because of public hospital funding problems, according to a national survey of specialist doctors.
The study, commissioned by the Australian Medical Association, asked 450 surgeons working in orthopaedics, ophthalmology, ear, nose and throat, urology and plastic surgery to identify the major factors contributing to waiting lists.
Lack of beds, insufficient access to theatre time and the increased demand on public hospitals due to declining private health insurance were the three main causes of long waiting lists.
This contrasts sharply with the line currently run by the Federal Government and some states, including Victoria, that a shortage of specialists was to blame.
The AMA federal president, Dr Brendan Nelson, said he was ``sick and tired" of governments underfunding the public system and then laying the blame for its problems at the feet of doctors.
``The fact of the matter is that in the last 10 years we've lost nearly 20,000 public hospital beds. You can train all the specialists you like but that point remains," Dr Nelson said.
``There are not enough intensive care beds, recovery beds, emergency beds and general beds and hospitals are not willing to put on extra operating sessions. Nearly half of the specialists surveyed said they were willing to do more work if the hospitals granted more operating time," he said.
The survey's author, Mr Roy Morgan, concluded that ``if it were not such a common experience for operating sessions in public hospitals to be cancelled and curtailed, the waiting lists for these five groups might be reduced to insignificant proportions in a year".
He estimated that an additional 100,000 patients could have received treatment if extra sessions - which surgeons were prepared to do - were granted by the hospitals.
© 1994 THE SUNDAY AGE
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