A State Government push to cut the equivalent of a thousand hospital jobs in Perth’s south will reduce the quality of service to patients, WA’s peak medical group has warned.
Health Minister Kim Hames confirmed yesterday the South Metropolitan Health Service needed to cut the equivalent of 1163 full-time jobs to make hospitals in the southern suburbs more cost-efficient compared with those in other States.
The Health Department offered 250 voluntary redundancies last month, but Dr Hames said most of the savings to be made in coming months would stem from streamlining rosters instead of cutting more jobs.
“We’re not necessarily looking at getting rid of other people — it depends on how they’re able to structure their efficiencies,” he said.
Australian Medical Association WA president Michael Gannon said reducing equivalent full-time positions would mean even more people were likely to lose their jobs because many worked part-time.
“The loss of 1100 full-time equivalent jobs might mean we’re talking about the loss of even 2000 or 3000 part-time jobs,” he said. “But what it really means is a cut to services.”
Dr Gannon said the cuts would result in longer waiting times for outpatient appointments and elective surgery.
“Week by week, little examples of the cuts … are becoming more obvious,” he said.
“When frail, half-blind ophthalmology patients have to get on the bus from Kelmscott or Rockingham to go to Fremantle, that’s the kind of cuts we’re talking about.”
Dr Hames denied the reductions would result in a poorer quality of service.
“We know that equivalent hospitals in other States are able to do the same amount of work but at a much cheaper cost,” he said.
WA had the second highest rate of costs per patient in Australia, 14 per cent above the national average.
Dr Hames released figures that showed Royal Perth Hospital would have to cut 568 FTE jobs, including 334 clinical staff, to bring it in line with the budget, and Fiona Stanley Hospital had to shed 297 FTE jobs.
Dr Hames said one reason the health service was in this situation was because some staff had not wanted to move across to the new Fiona Stanley Hospital, which left too people many in the system overall.
“We’ve got to trim those numbers back,” he said.
“We’ve seen the amount of deficit the State has got, we’ve seen health go from just under 25 per cent of the total State Budget to now well over 28 per cent.
“If we don’t trim our efficiencies in health, then we’re going to have a shortage of funding in police and teaching and a whole range of other areas. There’s only so much of the bucket to go round and if health use more than their fair share then it’s all the other areas that suffer.”
Dr Gannon said it was simply more expensive to provide health services in WA, which was 10 times the size of Victoria, and it offered higher quality care.
“What we’re really seeing is a government that mismanaged the boom and now they are working out ways of cutting from the health budget,” he said.
Shadow health minister Roger Cook said the Government needed to give answers on how cuts to jobs would affect patient services.