NEED TO FIX SICK STATE
JUS T last week the Mercury reported that blowouts in elective surgery waiting lists and overstretched emergency departments were just some of the issues hampering our healthservice. According to the Australian Medical Association’ s public hospital report card, the performance of public hospitals was deteriorating even before C OVID -19.
We all know that Tasmania’s poor performance in terms of healthcare is nothing new – and our emergency departments have been consistently slammed by the downward pressure caused by service gaps.
Our state has an ageing population, we rank among the worst states for obesity, smoking rates and poor education. All have major impact son the health system.
Previous solutions suggest simply pouring more money into hospitals, but we know that’ s just not going to cut it.
The key to easing pressure on the emergency department is to simultaneously work on the services that patients can access before a health issue become san emergency.
In February this year, figures were released at Senate Estimates that demonstrated Hobart had the worst GP bulk billing rates of any state capital. Launceston has worse rates than any other regional city or town.
Hobart public policy analyst Martyn Goddard said there structure of GP practices in our state’ s two major cities meant they were abandoning or massively reducing bulk-billing. “The inescapable conclusion is that significant numbers of Tasmanians have now been effectively deserted by their health systems – unable to afford to go to a GP or fill a prescription, and unable to rely on the last resort of public hospital emergency departments ,” he wrote at the time.
Try calling multiple Hobart practices of an afternoon to squeeze in a visit for an unwell child and you’ll be told six times over to either wait for the after-hours GP or head to the Royal.
We’ ve long reported on the kind of waits you can expect when you head to the hospital’ s Emergency Department with some patients saying they have been forced to wait up to 24 hours to be seen. And we’ve often hypothesised that perhaps not everyone presenting requires the sort of emergency help that department should be reserved for–they just have nowhere else togo.
The state government should take note of the recommendations put forward in the feasibility study into urgent care centres, which have the potential to bridge the gap in helping those that need timely care that’ s not necessarily a matter of life and death.
Funding for these facilities is, of course, the challenge, especially when the government is facing delivering a budget where there has never been so much need. But the potential saving this sort of centre could make–not to mention the potential to save lives by easing the burden on the emergency department–speaks for itself.