Queensland’s plan to shift public hospital patients into five star hotels #qldpol #keepourdoctors
PUBLIC hospital patients would recuperate in five-star hotels built on health campuses across the state under plans to free-up expensive acute care beds and save taxpayer dollars.
Plans to modernise the health system and tackle the spiralling cost of health care would also see more patients treated in their homes, while places will be found for another 250 people with disabilities currently languishing in public hospital beds because they have nowhere else to go.
Health Minister Lawrence Springborg has detailed his plans to modernise Queensland Health by opening the way for more public hospital campuses to enter into public-private partnerships.
It could see more plans for privately-funded hotels on public hospital campuses for patients who do not need high levels of medical care.
“We have to go away from thinking of ourselves as having to own and operate huge buildings,” Mr Springborg said.
“We are talking about appropriate care and value for money and people that don’t need to be in a $1000 bed because they are actually awaiting admission to hospital.
“It’s done in a small way at the Prince Charles (Hospital).
“We want to look at it elsewhere. Absolutely.”
It comes amid an impasse between the Newman Government and senior doctors who have threatened to walk off the job rather than sign individual workplace contracts.
Mr Springborg says after eight months of negotiations he was not prepared to reopen talks.
But head of peak doctor group, the Australian Medical Association’s Dr Steve Hambleton, insists the prospect of mass resignations by senior doctors was “not a hollow gesture”.
As the stand-off intensifies, Mr Springborg has detailed his plan to tackle the rapidly rising cost of delivering health services by exploring new ways caring for patients.
Under one option, Hospital and Health Service boards would investigate a potential deal with the private sector to build “medi-hotels” on public hospital campuses similar to facilities used overseas in countries like Norway, Sweden and Finland.
Queensland Health would pick up the $200 a night tab of the hotel stay for patients needing non-critical care rather than fund the more than $1000-a-night cost of a hospital bed.
Patients arriving at hospital for blood tests, patients recuperating from minor surgeries and mothers who have given birth could be among those given the option to trade their hospital beds for a hotel.
Taxpayers would also pick up the cost of hotel room visits by nurses under the scheme.
“Someone else would build and operate it, it’s just that the taxpayer would pay,” Mr Springborg said.
“Your surgery experience doesn’t have to be a sterile experience in an acute hospital ward.
“The option is to have someone in a hospital bed for $1000-a-night for the bed alone who doesn’t need to be..or you can put them in a really nice room that only costs the taxpayer $200 a night and where the patient would rather be.”
The idea is already being explored for the Royal Children’s Hospital site at Herston.
But Mr Springborg said opportunities existed at other public hospital sites in Queensland.
Any decisions about possible developments would ultimately rest with local hospital boards.
The expansion of the $28 million Hospital in the Home program, which pays Blue Care nurses to visit patients with conditions including skin, urinary tract and lung infections, will also free up beds.
Shifting Queenslanders with disabilities who have been left to languish in public hospitals while they await a public-funded place in the community is also a focus.
Mr Springborg said one North Queensland woman had been left to live in a public hospital for two years because she homeless.
“We have about 250 people in Queensland in acute hospital beds swept under the previous state government of Queensland that we are trying to get out who are actually disability type patients.”
He said he wants to see the outdated benchmarks measuring the health of the public hospital system changed from the number of beds, nurses and dollars spent to the number of unplanned returns to hospital, hospital acquired infection rate, the number of people seen and length of stay in hospital.
The cost of health care in Queensland rose by 45 per cent in the six years to 213, but the amount of extra procedures delivered only rose by 17 per cent.
Source: Courier Mail