If the NSW health system was a patient it would be in intensive care. Its internal organs i.e. Area Health Service bureaucrats, mostly Labor mates, would be regarded as cancerous cells and be removed.
Even the Prime Minister reckons there is a lot of krudd in the system and has threatened his NSW Labor counterparts with a Federal takeover of our hospitals if they don’t lift their game.
Given his own handling of the billion dollar home insulation fiasco it is highly likely the patient would go into mortal shock should this ever happen. If Kevin Rudd can’t insulate family homes properly how could they ever be trusted to takeover our hospital system.
Labor believes in the centralisation of power through big government, big unions and big business. Whenever they are in power at either the Federal or State level thousands of bureaucrats are recruited into the Public Service to run their programs. Local governments and local people are disenfranchised from the process or given token roles. Labor mates are appointed to organisations such as ‘Area Health Services’ as a reward for their services.
We now have the ridiculous situation where faceless bureaucrats are more important than doctors and nurses in our health system. The results are evident in daily newspaper reports of bungle after bungle.
It is clear the system has to change and local people have to be empowered to become partners in the running of local hospitals. The State Opposition plan to establish Health districts to maximise local access to local services whether they are hospital treatments, health promotion programs, chronic care or other community based services (with the possible exception of highly complex tertiary level care where patients may have to travel for treatment) seems to be a better option.
District Health Boards rather than individual Hospital Boards will ensure the focus is on total patient care, although hospitals may chose to appoint advisory boards under their policy. These Boards will be able to manage partnership arrangements with pooled funding allocations negotiated by the Commonwealth and State Governments and other providers.
Board members would be appointed on merit to include people who have medical expertise, financial and risk management skills, and are in good standing in local communities. They would be honorary positions which would have a better chance of re-engaging local communities and clinicians to improve health care in NSW.
Labor cannot stand by the old cliché ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ any longer. Our health system is broke and needs to be fixed.
