Page 1445 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 26 September 1989
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health system - will treat future health funding issues and the way in which it might change the basis for funding our hospitals. There are many factors built in by the Commonwealth from those kinds of decisions, and to assume that those factors will be constant is simply a mistake.
I want to refer just briefly in this debate to the original report of Dr Kearney of November 1988 and some of the things he said in that. I raise them because there has been discussion in the days since this steering committee report was handed down about the nature of the hospital system in the ACT and whether or not the steering committee's report really reflected on the existing operation or efficiency of the three hospitals we already have. I know that there were some pointed comments by Calvary Hospital, for example, to point out its own efficiency and the fact that it was providing a relatively cost-efficient service to the people of Canberra. That assertion is borne out by the figures that Dr Kearney produced in November last year. He pointed out that although Calvary only had a bit under 5,500 admissions compared with Royal Canberra's 19,500 and Woden Valley's 13,500, nonetheless the cost per occupied bed day at Calvary was only just over $300, whereas the cost at Royal Canberra was over $400.
That is quite a significant figure, Mr Speaker. What it effectively means is that it costs something like $100 more a day to put a patient in a bed at Royal Canberra than it does at Calvary Hospital. Woden Valley Hospital is somewhere in between, at $329. Similarly, the average cost per patient - this includes every factor - for Calvary Hospital is $2,061. For Royal Canberra it is $2,234 - again, quite a significant difference. Those figures are even more interesting when compared with similar costs in the States. The cost of providing beds in the ACT is much greater than it is, for example, in Queensland.
We have to ask ourselves, given these disparities, whether or not the most important issue facing us in the health system is: do we replace Royal Canberra, or upgrade it, or make Woden Valley the principal hospital, or whatever? Perhaps the most important issue is the total cost of providing health care to the people of the ACT and whether presently they are getting value for money out of the present system. I suggest that those figures point rather starkly to the fact that they are not. When we look at the issues surrounding the upgrading of Woden Valley or the downgrading of Royal Canberra or whatever, we cannot ignore issues of that kind.
I want to conclude by saying that the Liberal Party is not yet committed to a position. It wants to ensure that the decision it makes in the course of time is the right decision. It is exploring alternative options. I hope that we can come up with options that preserve the best that the ACT already has. In that respect, we would obviously like - and members of this chamber would also
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