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January 18, 2017AMA (NSW) President, Prof Brad Frankum, says he’s glad Federal Government funding for public hospitals is going up because it’s been so low in recent years.
“The last 10 years of Federal Government recurrent funding for public hospitals has been highly variable.
“From growth of 13.1 per cent in 2008-09 to lows of negative 4.9 per cent in 2009-10.
“Except for 2014-15, where public hospital funding from the Federal Government grew by 5.4 per cent, since 2011, the highest annual growth was 2 per cent.
“If Federal Government spending on public hospitals is set to grow by over five per cent for the next few years, it’s only because it’s under-invested recently.
“On top of this, the Federal Government’s share of public hospital funding has been decreasing since 2008-09.
“Not to mention the fact that as a proportion of GDP, overall health funding is stable.
“The Federal Government may be crying poor over this but the evidence shows it has no reason to be,” Prof Frankum said.
“In any event, seeing yesterday’s and today’s headlines from NSW about Concord and Prince of Wales Hospitals, you’d be hard pressed to see public hospital funding as anything other than necessary.
“This is symptomatic of a wider problem across NSW – the ongoing growth in demand for public hospital services placing massive amounts of stress on the system.
“Every quarter, the Bureau of Health Information is showing records being broken in demand.
“The most recent one had an all-time record for admissions, the one before that it was the greatest number of elective surgeries ever performed in NSW, and in the first quarter it was unprecedented visits to emergency departments – which broke the record set the previous quarter,” Prof Frankum said.
“If the Federal Government was serious about reducing costs at public hospitals, it would invest more strongly in preventative health.
“It would be putting more money into its Health Care Homes program and be doing more to help reduce the incidence of overweight and obesity.
“Money spent in general practice provides extraordinary value and overweight and obesity are the biggest threats to the health of Australians,” Prof Frankum said.
“The Federal Government needs to stop gaming the system and listen to people like Mike Baird and Jillian Skinner, who got public hospital funding onto the COAG agenda.
“The NSW Government has made serious investments in health infrastructure but these new hospitals count on predicable and adequate funding to provide services.
“Based on the rapid and ongoing growth in demand for hospital services in NSW, increased public hospital funding is absolutely necessary,” Prof Frankum said.
Media contact: Lachlan Jones 0419 402 955