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Real Health Reform

Posted by: Michael Smith | 10 June, 2009 - 2:46 PM

Queensland Health is seriously crook.

Tony Morris said so in 2005.

Peter Beattie said after Morris’s enquiry 'I want to assure everyone who has been hoping for positive change as a result of the Inquiry that there will, indeed, be positive change.' He said there’d be a 6 point plan and it would all be fixed.

http://www.cabinet.qld.gov.au/MMS/StatementDisplaySingle.aspx?id=42516

Peter Forster’s was next. His 'Queensland Health Systems Review Final Report September 2005' said this,

'It will be important that Queensland Health can demonstrate quickly to the community that it serves them well so that the adverse effect on its reputation can begin to be repaired. Queensland Health must restore its reputation with the community or this may have dire consequences. Significant reform and improvement is now necessary.'

His report set out the problems with planning and systems. And the government, in particular Stephen Robertson, said that it would all be fixed, they’d listen to the report.

http://health.qld.gov.au/health_sys_review/final/cover_foreword.pdf

If this government did what it said it would do things might not be so bad.

But they didn’t.

Which brings us to today. The Auditor General has tabled a new report, Report to Parliament no 2 for 2009 - Health Service Planning http://www.qao.qld.gov.au/downloadables/publications/auditor_general_reports/2009_Report_No.2_Executive_Summary.pdf

He’s reviewed what’s happened since the Forster Report.

It’s damning. He makes these points.

'I expected that with a focus on service planning since 2005, the department would have more advanced service planning systems in place. The audit identified fundamental weaknesses.'

He made these findings.

A lack of any link between the state-wide and district plans.

Limited central oversight.

Limited coordination.

There’s no link between service plans and funding. In other words, the money doesn’t flow to match the needs.

He found there is a Queensland State-wide Health Services Plan. But it had no timeframes.

No performance indicators.

No monitoring.

No evaluation.

No reporting framework.

He found that a 'Planning and Coordination Branch”' was set up after the Forster report. I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be to work there. He said 'there has been a high level of planning activity'. In other words they do a lot of planning work. Then politicians ignore their work and go ahead and make announcements independently, without planning and without business cases. It’s all in the report.

Paul Lucas is the Deputy Premier. He said this yesterday, 'I think that in the past what has happened is that there has been public pressure for something to happen, then an announcement is made and then off we go.' Well it’s all happened under his government’s watch.

The Auditor General gives examples. He says the Townsville Hospital was announced 3 years ago without any supporting health services or capital infrastructure plan. He found that while 100 beds were announced, there’s no budget to expand support services in the hospital like pharmacy. And no business case.

Finally, 3 years after the political announcement, a business case was produced in February this year. It warned that the service would be dysfunctional.

Peter Beattie announced the new Children’s Hospital on the Mater site on the same day that he announced the sale of the Golden Casket Lottery Business. He got a front page in the Courier Mail that said 'sick kids win the lottery.'

No business case for the new single children’s hospital has ever been made public. Despite having asked for it I haven’t seen it.

And we’ve got a perfectly good building in Herston. Where was the planning that said we’d be better off with one hospital south of the river?

And the result is the tragedy of the queues, the ramping of ambulances, the doctors and nurses under pressure.

This government’s response is to spin, spin, spin.

These reports tell us how to fix the problems. They are consistently ignored by publicity seeking politicians. The professional reports are replaced by press releases in politically significant electorates.

Until we get real, professional managers and not political hacks in place we can expect to have these sorts of issues plague us.

Thank God for the independence of the Auditor General Glen Poole and his staff. At least that office represents some money well spent.

Blog comments

Commissioner Tony Morris shook his head in disbelief during the Bundaberg inquiry when he learned that nurses were hiding patients from a doctor to protect them. The more things change the more they stay the same.

Albert Wednesday 10 June, 2009 - 3:32 PM