Page 259 - Week 01 - Thursday, 24 February 1994
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MINISTERIAL ARRANGEMENTS
MR BERRY (Deputy Chief Minister): As members are aware, the Chief Minister is travelling to Hobart for the Council of Australian Governments meeting and she will be absent from question time today. If there are any questions that members may wish to have answered, they can direct them to me.
QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
Woden Valley Hospital - Bed Numbers
MRS CARNELL: I will do the right thing, Mr Berry, and ask you a question. My question without notice is directed to the Minister for Health. Today it has been confirmed that there are only 482 operational beds at Woden Valley Hospital, excluding day care. This is 128 beds fewer than were available last year. In June 1991, when the Minister took office, there were 405 beds at Woden Valley Hospital and 282 beds at Royal Canberra Hospital. Since then the Minister has closed Royal Canberra Hospital and has spent more than $100m on the redevelopment of Woden Valley Hospital. How does the Minister justify spending more than $100m to achieve 233 fewer public hospital beds?
MR BERRY: And, of course, I patched up the mess that was made by Mr Humphries in his period of office. Mrs Carnell completely ignores the significant growth in the number of beds at Calvary Hospital. You did not want to talk about that, did you?
Mrs Carnell: No, there is not. There were 178 at that stage, and there are now 175 - three fewer.
MR BERRY: When Royal Canberra Hospital closed, of course, there was a growth in beds.
Mrs Carnell: No, there was not. There are 233 fewer.
MR BERRY: Mrs Carnell, of course, excludes day surgery, because she wants to ignore advances in surgical procedures within the hospital system, and advances in efficiency. The fact of the matter is that there are some predictions that say that by the turn of the century we will be doing 50 per cent of our surgical procedures in day surgery. We are now on about 32 per cent, I think. That will result in fewer beds. It will continue to result in fewer beds.
Mrs Carnell: Except that the same predictions show that we need 3.3 beds per 1,000.
MR BERRY: It will result in fewer beds. Mrs Carnell has ignored the fact that there has been a growth in day surgery within the health system. Whether she likes it or not, there will be fewer beds per capita as a result of those improvements in efficiency.
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