Howard’s hospital plans a step back

Howard’s “local hospital boards” are a step back, not forward

We need to fund more staff and new models of care
1. For example, maternity cases shouldn’t be at emergency departments
2. We also need to get registered nurses and GPs back into aged care to reduce hospital readmissions

QNU (Queensland Nurses Union) secretary, Gay Hawksworth, said simply having another level of government meddling in the administration of hospitals does nothing to deal with pressure situations like that experienced by a pregnant woman at Royal North Shore Hospital last week.

“The real way forward is to ask ourselves why so many women with pregnancy-related issues are forced to go to a hospital emergency department in the first place. That is an issue the QNU will be discussing with Queensland Health as part of our campaign for improved midwifery services around the State.

“We need to find and fund creative solutions to these types of situations. Pregnancy is a life event, not a disease. As midwives have been saying for years, it needs to be managed differently and all its up and downs, including miscarriage, should be dealt with in a maternity-based system, not the accident and medical emergency system. Developing and properly funding such an approach will take pressure off the general hospital system and provide a more focused service for pregnant women and their families.

“These are the types of creative solutions we need. Not a back-to-the-future approach such as reinstating local boards, with all the local politicking, narrow-mindedness and parochialism that goes with them. There needs to be genuine community input into health decision making at all levels. These boards, with all the local patronage and politics they entail, will not achieve that.

“Disconnecting individual hospitals from the broader health system in this way, would also be a disaster for the quality of care and range of safe services in many regions. The fact is, for a variety of reasons not every hospital can provide every service. It is not in the interests of stronger health care to have individual hospital administrators deluding themselves and their local communities that they can.

“The dash-for cash approach that also seems to be part of this funding proposal, should also send shock waves through the community. Let us never forget it was this type of management approach at Bundaberg Hospital that led to the Dr Patel scandals of recent years. Elective surgery was being forced through, without due consideration for patient safety, so the hospital could secure extra funding. What is to stop John Howard’s local boards doing the same thing in their rush to secure extra federal funding?

“The QNU is also very concerned about the prospect of the Howard Government, if it is re-elected, using these boards to meddle in the employment conditions of nurses and other hospital staff. This is code for forcing WorkChoices and AWAs on public hospital nurses, just as they have used funding negotiations to force them on other sectors such as higher education.

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