Mr HENDERSON - 2001-05-30
Mr Speaker, $400m extra debt by this time next year will mean Territorians will pay nearly $600 000 a day in interest alone, and let’s look at what Territorians get for their daily $600 000 interest bill.
Yesterday’s budget papers indicated RDH had 268 authorised hospital beds, a decrease of 29 beds from the previous year. Ten years ago, the annual report showed that RDH had 311 hospital beds. Isn’t it true, despite paying $600 000 a day in interest on CLP debt, the budget provides 43 less beds at RDH than 10 years ago? Doesn’t this appalling figure completely justify the AMA’s score of three out of 10 for your budget and confirms your government as the country’s worst financial managers?
ANSWER
Mr Speaker, they have questions all over the place but the nub of it is to say there are less beds, are you doing less. I guess that is the nub of it. It would be a pretty foolhardy person in politics with anything to do with health who would be using beds as a benchmark over a period of 10 years.
There are a number of devices we have used. We use diagnostic-related groupings, we use average length of stay, we use through put, we use patient numbers, we use numbers to do with episodes of care and most of these will go to an accurate description of what we are doing in our hospitals. In the old days, you had a number of beds, you had people, some of them warehoused because they were waiting to hop on planes or we were worried that they might be non-compliant with their medicine, or we were worried they might not get adequate treatment in their house; we have done an enormous amount of work with this. We have our transitional care project, we have our hospital in the home project, we have a number of projects where we can rely on early discharge and make sure that domiciliary care and Meals on Wheels and other programs are in place.
Mr Henderson interjecting.
Mr DUNHAM: Mr Speaker, I think I have twigged why they do not understand. I think it is because they do not listen. I think the problem really is that he asks what he believes is the question he has the answer to and he keeps screaming out across the parliament instead of listening to the answer. I think if we can just train him - it is a bit like a petulant child, he really has to be taught that you have to listen, particularly if you ask a question.
So, the answer about how many beds we have. If you go way back you will see there was a drop in beds. The reason for that is because there was a thing called the Darwin Private Hospital built. So, there are some new beds that you can go back and have a look at. If you look at how you count your beds the most important thing is to look at how many people you are treating. And how health departments around the world, in Australia and here are configured now, is we know it is high cost. We know it is high through-put, and we know that it is high tech inside hospitals. We also know that there are many people who can be treated in their home, which is much better for them, that we can delay admission on a number of occasions and we can also have early discharge into the caring environment of one’s home if we are very clever - which we are. That is why it would be very dumb to look at the Royal Darwin Hospital, count up the number of beds and make an assumption as to how much work goes on there.
A more appropriate measure would be to look at the number of treatments we dispense in that place. Now I can tell you that in our new Accident and Emergency Department there will be some beds in there. And we would hope that we discharge people from those beds, not admit them into the tower block, not admit them into Royal Darwin. That they go into Accident and Emergency and it could be something to do with, for instance, the necessity to look at somebody with concussion and it could well be that they are discharged into their home. So we are not in the game of having more and more and more beds in the hospital. We are in the game of treating more and more and more people and there are some ways you can do this often without them having to stay a night or two nights or a week and we have been able to bring those bed stays down.
I suggest that the opposition spokesman look at some of those measuring devices because they are much more scientific now and they inform commentators in a much better way about the activities inside hospitals than the raw and clumsy measure of how many beds.
Yesterday’s budget papers indicated RDH had 268 authorised hospital beds, a decrease of 29 beds from the previous year. Ten years ago, the annual report showed that RDH had 311 hospital beds. Isn’t it true, despite paying $600 000 a day in interest on CLP debt, the budget provides 43 less beds at RDH than 10 years ago? Doesn’t this appalling figure completely justify the AMA’s score of three out of 10 for your budget and confirms your government as the country’s worst financial managers?
ANSWER
Mr Speaker, they have questions all over the place but the nub of it is to say there are less beds, are you doing less. I guess that is the nub of it. It would be a pretty foolhardy person in politics with anything to do with health who would be using beds as a benchmark over a period of 10 years.
There are a number of devices we have used. We use diagnostic-related groupings, we use average length of stay, we use through put, we use patient numbers, we use numbers to do with episodes of care and most of these will go to an accurate description of what we are doing in our hospitals. In the old days, you had a number of beds, you had people, some of them warehoused because they were waiting to hop on planes or we were worried that they might be non-compliant with their medicine, or we were worried they might not get adequate treatment in their house; we have done an enormous amount of work with this. We have our transitional care project, we have our hospital in the home project, we have a number of projects where we can rely on early discharge and make sure that domiciliary care and Meals on Wheels and other programs are in place.
Mr Henderson interjecting.
Mr DUNHAM: Mr Speaker, I think I have twigged why they do not understand. I think it is because they do not listen. I think the problem really is that he asks what he believes is the question he has the answer to and he keeps screaming out across the parliament instead of listening to the answer. I think if we can just train him - it is a bit like a petulant child, he really has to be taught that you have to listen, particularly if you ask a question.
So, the answer about how many beds we have. If you go way back you will see there was a drop in beds. The reason for that is because there was a thing called the Darwin Private Hospital built. So, there are some new beds that you can go back and have a look at. If you look at how you count your beds the most important thing is to look at how many people you are treating. And how health departments around the world, in Australia and here are configured now, is we know it is high cost. We know it is high through-put, and we know that it is high tech inside hospitals. We also know that there are many people who can be treated in their home, which is much better for them, that we can delay admission on a number of occasions and we can also have early discharge into the caring environment of one’s home if we are very clever - which we are. That is why it would be very dumb to look at the Royal Darwin Hospital, count up the number of beds and make an assumption as to how much work goes on there.
A more appropriate measure would be to look at the number of treatments we dispense in that place. Now I can tell you that in our new Accident and Emergency Department there will be some beds in there. And we would hope that we discharge people from those beds, not admit them into the tower block, not admit them into Royal Darwin. That they go into Accident and Emergency and it could be something to do with, for instance, the necessity to look at somebody with concussion and it could well be that they are discharged into their home. So we are not in the game of having more and more and more beds in the hospital. We are in the game of treating more and more and more people and there are some ways you can do this often without them having to stay a night or two nights or a week and we have been able to bring those bed stays down.
I suggest that the opposition spokesman look at some of those measuring devices because they are much more scientific now and they inform commentators in a much better way about the activities inside hospitals than the raw and clumsy measure of how many beds.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016