Nurses may be recruited from overseas to staff extra beds as part of the $70 million funding boost announced for the Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital at South Brisbane, the Queensland Government says.
Health Minister Cameron Dick said the State Government will inject the additional funds over the next four years, with up to $20 million earmarked for 31 additional bedsat the Brisbane facility.
“That’s a 10 per cent increase in the number of beds,” he said.
Mr Dick met with the Australian Medical Association of Queensland (AMAQ) on Monday afternoon, in which concerns were raised about resources, staff retention and morale.
The AMAQ also demanded changes at the year-old hospital, including more beds, resources and an improved IT system.
Mr Dick today confirmed $5.8 million would be spent on a one-off enhancement of information and communications technology (ICT).
An extra $1.3 million a year would be spent on ensuring more sick children in regional areas can be retrieved by air.
The $1.5 billion hospital has already been the subject of two independent reviews.
Both found major problems, but nothing that caused long-term harm to patients.
Mr Dick said the plan announced today had been made possible with budget savings.
“We have a constant review process,” he said.
“We do quarterly and regular reviews on how funding is going – if there are savings, we use those savings to redirect them and we’ve found that money in the department to provide to that hospital.”
Staff must be in place before beds are opened
However, he said the extra beds could not be opened without more staff.
“The staffing of those beds is just so critical,” he said.
“One of the challenges we have got with paediatric care of course is you can’t just pick a nurse intensivist off-the-shelf – we need to recruit broadly for that.
“I don’t rule out recruiting overseas to ensure we’ve got the right number of staff.
“Obviously we want staff from Queensland and Australia – we need to get the staff, we’ll start that recruitment.
“We’re not going to open the beds until we’ve got the staff there.”
He said he wanted to “put to rest” the idea that the Royal Children’s Hospital at Herston would be reopened.
“I don’t want to raise false hope that it will,” he said.
“I can’t change the past – all I can do is make the future the best it can be and I want to make sure that the [Lady Cilento Children’s] hospital is properly funded and operating as well as it can and supporting our staff, parents and children.
“My focus will be getting Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital to be one of the best paediatric hospitals in the world.
“I think in the next decade we can have a world-class tertiary facility there that would be regarded by the rest of the world as leading.”
Deputy Premier Jackie Trad said the issues at Lady Cilento had gone on long enough.
“I commend the Health Minister for finding a first solution to what I think is a very poorly designed start to Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital,” she said.
“Obviously doctors, practitioners, patients and patients have been saying that something is wrong here.”
Very reasonable and good solution, AMAQ says
Dr Chris Zappala, the president of the AMAQ, said Queensland had now “got what it needed”.
“This is the only tertiary referral paediatric institution in the state – we’ve got excellent medical, clinical and support staff there,” he said.
“The system deficiencies that were very apparent to everyone in the past are now being addressed so that those people can do a good job and move forward and offer world leading care.
“It’s a good outcome – it goes towards to addressing many of our concerns.
“We have a very reasonable and good solution on the table and it’s very important that we move forward now and realise the potential of that.”
However, Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg said it was “very interesting” that Mr Dick had found more money in the health department to put into the hospital.
“[The former LNP government] turned around a $140 million budget deficit when Labor left office [in 2009] to about $500 million in surplus,” he said.
“I think if what you look at what’s happening here … fortunately for the Minister, [it’s] extra money that [the former LNP government] left in the kitty through good financial management.”