Rudd's fervour fades on health
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday February 1, 2010
ACCORDING to the Productivity Commission, 2007-08 was a bad year in NSW hospitals for accidents which harmed or even killed patients. There were 59 so-called sentinel incidents - severely harmful events due to systemic failures - in NSW, 40 per cent of the national figure, from the state which accounts for only 30 per cent of hospital admissions. The state government, though, says the poor result - a big turnaround from the previous year - was simply because this state now collects better statistics than other states, through the Clinical Excellence Commission. Well, perhaps. The commission began operations in 2004 and it has been collecting information systematically on clinical incidents in hospitals for at least two years before 2007-08. The quality of the statistics is no doubt good - and the government deserves praise for setting up the commission to collect and publish them - but they were presumably just as good the previous year when the figures showed NSW was performing well in comparison with other states. The important question - to which there can as yet be no answer - is whether this dip in performance is temporary, or a sign of declining health standards in the state. The Health Minister, Carmel Tebbutt, has made soothing noises: the rate of serious incidents in NSW represents just 0.4 per cent of all admissions. But all her reassurances show is that, with its budget in a fragile state, there is little that her government can do on its own to improve the health system quickly.For health funding to increase dramatically so things can improve, the federal government would have to intervene. The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, promised before the 2007 election to hold a referendum at the following election seeking the power to take over the running of hospitals from the states if they failed to achieve certain benchmarks by the middle of 2009. That deadline has passed, and the benchmarks have mostly not been achieved, but enthusiasm now from the Commonwealth for a takeover - or from the states for that matter - seems to be waning. Pressed on the point last Friday, Rudd went into great detail about the federal government's increases to health funding so far, and then referred to the Health and Hospitals Reform Commission report which recommended a good deal less than a full federal takeover. The states are still considering it. Canberra will propose a response and if it is rejected, a referendum may yet take place. With several states now opposed or dithering, though, a full takeover is unlikely. The big bang of 2007 is looking like 2010's whimper.
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