Page 3661 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 20 October 1993
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MR BERRY: You asked the question. That is a massive increase when you - - -
MADAM SPEAKER: Order! This is not an open debating session. Mr Berry is attempting to answer this question. The provisions of standing order 39 are still in action. I want a bit of order.
MR BERRY: The practice of bed closures around Christmas periods will continue. It has always been so. It is a sensible management practice, and it means that we are able to give a whole range of people their leave when it is more convenient for them. There will always be one or two who do not want to go on leave and end up unhappy about the process of wind-downs at Christmas and other public holiday periods; but, essentially, overall it is a bed management practice within hospitals which is widely used. I do not control the waiting lists.
Mrs Carnell: You do if you close the beds.
MR BERRY: Mrs Carnell bleats again, "You do if you close the beds". Wrong, wrong, wrong again, as usual. I said that I do not control waiting lists. It depends on the number of people who are put on the waiting list for surgery by the visiting medical officers. There is no guarantee that by opening an extra couple of hundred beds those waiting lists would decline.
One of the things that these people refuse to acknowledge, or have never tried to acknowledge, is that there is growing confidence in our hospital system. More people are prepared to use it, and that is why the pressure grew last year. We treated about 5 per cent more people. There is no indication that the community is any sicker - - -
Mr Humphries: But the population is growing, is it not?
MR BERRY: Population growth has been one-and-a-half per cent, 2 per cent.
Ms Follett: Two per cent.
MR BERRY: Two per cent against a 5 per cent growth in people in the hospital, so that is an inexplicable growth. I expect that there will still be pressure on the waiting lists. I do not think we have a magic formula that will wipe them out overnight. I have no doubt that there will still be pressure on waiting lists and - - -
Mr Humphries: How much will they grow by?
MR BERRY: You will have to go and ask the visiting medical officers that, Mr Humphries, because they are the ones that put people on the lists. As far as I am concerned, there will be pressure on waiting lists; but there will also be bed management strategies which will increase the efficiency of our hospital system. We will keep the pressure on to bring our average length of stay down. That means that we can make more efficient use of beds and make more efficient use of the traditional close-down periods and, of course, as I said, our average length of stay will improve. This is about an overall improvement of the hospital system which will mean that we will put more people through the public hospital system than we have in the past, and with fewer beds.
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