Page 1417 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 11 May 1994
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Hospital Services - Interstate Patients
MR STEVENSON: My question is to Mr Connolly, as Health Minister. It concerns the use of the ACT hospital system by patients from New South Wales. Firstly, I ask whether he has an understanding of how many there are. What are the current arrangements with the New South Wales Government for subsidising those patients? When was the last review of that area done? Do those arrangements look fair to both sides? As one of his staff mentioned a little earlier, as the ski season is coming, perhaps this is the relevant time to look at it.
MR CONNOLLY: I thank Mr Stevenson for his question. This is a very sensible question to ask on the important public issue of health. As far as I am aware, it is an issue that the Opposition never raised with my predecessor, despite their huffing and their puffing, and their whingeing and their moaning. Mr Stevenson, I think, is the first member of the Assembly to ask for some public disclosure about this very important issue. Madam Speaker, the cross-border financial arrangements for health are very important because something like 25 per cent of the public hospital patients in the ACT are from out of State. While for most other States it is a sort of knock-for-knock arrangement and it all cancels out, for the ACT there is a massive imbalance in the sense that far more New South Wales patients end up in the ACT than our patients end up in New South Wales.
The issue is addressed in the Medicare agreement. The Medicare agreement, you may be aware, was re-signed in 1993 for a five-year period. This was an issue that Mr Berry, as the then Minister, pursued with some vigour to ensure that we got the best deal for the ACT. The structure that has been arrived at for these cross-border arrangements works on what are called the KPMG - referring to Peat Marwick, the national accounting group - national cost weights. This is an accounting formula for working out the cost of a person in a bed in a public hospital in Australia. As a result of some vigorous negotiations, the cross-border deal with New South Wales was worked out not on the KPMG national average cost weights but specifically on metropolitan cost weights, recognising that it is not an average hospital bed stay. New South Wales residents coming to the ACT tend to be in our major hospital, mostly Woden, for major items. As a result of that we have a better deal with New South Wales than we have with other States, based on metropolitan cost weights, and this benefits the ACT to the tune of about a million dollars in front of where we otherwise would have been.
I am happy to table for Mr Stevenson's information the breakdown of cross-border payments and receipts intended for the current financial year. The bottom line is, Madam Speaker, that we have a total revenue of nearly $31m coming in under that formula and expenditure going out of some $5.5m, for a total net benefit of about $25m. The bulk of that by far is from New South Wales. This matter is taken very seriously by the Government. It was taken very seriously by Mr Berry when that 1993 Medicare agreement was being negotiated.
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