published letters

Published in The Age on Tuesday, February 7, 2006

Where will the debate about waiting lists and crowded emergency departments end? It really starts in the wards of public hospitals where patients who should be in nursing homes or hostels can’t find a place, where patients who should have been managed well in their homes or nursing homes couldn’t get good primary care and became so sick they needed admission, where doctors frustrated with the poor capacity of the hospital leave for the easier and more lucrative publicly financed “private” hospitals.

If there are no beds, cancellations have to happen, and patients must wait in emergency departments on trolleys. If waiting times for surgery are over a year and multiple cancellations still happen, it’s a further blow to morale amongst staff and a further incentive to move to the taxpayer funded private system.

It won’t end until these factors are sorted, and unfortunately most of these factors are largely the responsibility of the Federal Government whose best idea to date seems to be a hotline which will not touch the problem as it only deals with minor illnesses, not the root causes of our public hospitals’ woes.

Dr Tim Woodruff
President
Doctors Reform Society