Better health and ageing for all Australians

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Sign up and move on the health reform agenda

The signing of the hospital funding agreements will not only deliver record funding for State and Territory hospitals, it will also be a major step forward in accountability and transparency.

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29 August 2003

Sign up and move on the health reform agenda

The signing of the hospital funding agreements will not only deliver record funding for State and Territory hospitals, it will also be a major step forward in accountability and transparency.

By signing the agreements, the States and Territories will be putting the interests of their public hospitals first.

State Public hospitals will now have greater certainty to run their operations more efficiently with funding in place for five years instead of one year.

Under the agreements, the States and Territories will be required to put their money on the table for five years. We are asking them to do no more than the Commonwealth.

Also, the States and Territories will be required to at least match the Commonwealth's rate of growth to ensure they shoulder their fair share of the funding burden.

It does no credit to Opposition Leader Simon Crean and his health spokeswoman Julia Gillard to misrepresent the facts, as they have done today, about State hospitals and Medicare.

They continue to shift the blame from the failure of their State Labor colleagues to run their hospital emergency departments properly by falsely claiming that the fall in bulk billing had increased pressure on State hospital emergency departments.

The claim that emergency rooms are filled with non-emergency patients who cannot access GPs is wrong and has been rejected by doctors.

Today, the President of the Australian Medical Association, Dr Bill Glasson, on 2UE said when asked: Do too many people go to emergency departments rather than to their GP?

He replied: "Look, I think that is a fallacy. I think the reality is that 99 per cent of the patients that go to accident and emergency departments around this country are truly acts of emergency patients and require to be assessed at this level.

"I don't believe they are being clogged, as we are being led to believe, by general practice-type patients."

And to set the record straight. Mr Crean incorrectly claims I boycotted meetings with the States.

I have attended every scheduled meeting of Health Ministers since I became the Minister for Health and Ageing.

I did not attend two unscheduled meetings called by the Labor States because these meetings were to pursue their political agenda and not to advance the reform agenda.

Finally, Mr Crean is crying crocodile tears over our record $42 billion funding offer to the States and Territories. That is a $10 billion increase, 17 per cent over and above inflation.

Despite his political posturing, his Labor Senate colleagues allowed the record funding to pass the Senate in late June.

Media inquiries: Randal Markey, Media Adviser, Senator Patterson's office, 02 6277 7220.