Page 3658 - Week 12 - Thursday, 13 October 1994
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Of the 11, we already know that four have never opened. If members would like to add up the three urology beds, the four high dependency beds, the four paediatric beds, and the two bone-marrow beds, they will find a small problem for the Minister.
I would like to deal now with the seven paediatric beds. If the Minister had sought to ask the right questions, he would know that those seven paediatric beds were, in fact, opened temporarily on 23 August. They were opened as a result of the demand caused by the rotavirus epidemic. They were opened temporarily, using staff from agencies and staff that were willing to work overtime. They were never opened permanently. In fact, they were closed the moment that the actual patients left, as the casual staff or the agency staff were used only on an hour-by-hour basis.
I have just been handed a note which says that, unfortunately, the four oncology beds that I was talking about have never really been opened because of a lack of staff. We can count those out now, too. To use your own definitions, Minister, an available hospital bed is a staffed hospital bed - a bed that actually has available staff. It seems that we can now cross off the oncology beds as well.
Let me go back to paediatrics for a moment. The seven beds were opened on 23 August; as I said, using temporary agency staff. Therefore, they cannot be counted. I am very happy to read out the whole definition of what an available hospital bed is, but I am sure that the Minister knows what it is. Basically, the definition of available public hospital beds is beds that are "located in a suitable place" where permanent staff are available or "could be made available within a reasonable period, to service the patients ... who might occupy them". It states:
The average number of beds should always be shown as a whole number.
This is something that I would like members to remember. I will go on with this definition, which actually comes from the National Health Data Dictionary, version 3. It is actually spoken about in the second document that the Minister tabled this week - the one headed "Additional Information on WVH Statistics". Interestingly, beds exclude:
surgical tables, recovery trolleys, delivery beds, cots for normal neonates, emergency stretchers/beds not normally authorised or funded and beds designated for same-day non-inpatient care.
That is a direct quote from that document. Therefore, a bed that is open temporarily, with part-time or casual staff, is simply not an available bed. These seven beds closed again as soon as the patients that were in them were no longer in the hospital system, which took the number of available paediatric beds down to beds with staff available so that, if we had a tragedy today, we would know how many children we could actually fit into paediatrics. The answer is 52. The figures that were tabled this week actually showed 56. There is a difference of four, immediately.
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