Just seven beds in 12-months fails to meet demand

The number of public hospital beds in Western Australia has grown by just seven in the last year, emergency departments are still struggling to meet demand, and the median time for elective surgery has jumped again – all putting pressure on public health services in WA.

Releasing the WA chapter of the latest Federal AMA’s 2011 Public Hospital Report Card, AMA (WA) President Associate Professor David Mountain said the report contained a number of significant warning signs for hospital care in our state.

The report shows there were 378 new hospital beds opened across Australia in 2009-2010. Just seven of these were in WA, taking the number of beds in WA hospitals to 5376.

“We have a growing population and we have a growing number of older people. It is simply not good enough to be ignoring the need for a dramatic increase in the number of beds,” A/Prof Mountain said.

WA was only managing an increase in demand for hospital care by asking staff at all levels to do more, he said.

 “We can’t outrun the growth and the demographics of our state. We are growing and we are ageing and we need more hospital beds. At the moment we are playing constant catch-up. Demand will continue to grow and the State Government needs to plan for the future in a far more coordinated manner than we seem to be at the moment.”

“We need a boost of 400 beds immediately to catch up and an additional 100 additional beds every year in order to cope with the expected growth. Just waiting for the new beds at Fiona Stanley Hospital is not enough, especially if any beds at other hospitals are closed,” he said.

Failure to increase the number of beds will only see access to hospital care become more difficult for everyone.

“WA hospitals are at the risk of floundering. With our population growing – and ageing – every day, we desperately need to look at boosting the number of beds coming on stream each year,” he said.

The latest data also showed that only 51 per cent of Category 3 (urgent) Emergency patients were seen within the recommended time, compared to a national average of 64 per cent.

“There will need to be a significant improvement if WA is to meet the performance benchmark of 80 per cent by 2012-13,” A/Prof Mountain said.

The median waiting time for elective surgery rose again in 2009-10 to 32 days, continuing the trend over the last decade. In 2001-02 the median waiting time was 25 days.

However there was a further improvement in the percentage of Category 2 surgery cases seen within the recommended time in 2009-10 to 78 per cent, up from 67 per cent in 2006-07.

The AMA Report uses data from the Department of Health.
2011 Public Hospital Report Card