Australia's "free" hospital debacle continues

Another public hospital system in reverse-gear

I have previously posted on the meltdown in the State of Queensland but it seems that the State of Victoria has big problems too. In both States, the number of hospital beds provided has declined while demand has increased!

Dozens of beds have closed in the face of soaring patient numbers as Victoria's public hospital system struggles to meet demand. More than 180 beds have dropped out of the public hospital system in the eight years to 2003-04, while patient numbers have increased 30 per cent. At the same time the number of people languishing on hospital waiting lists has jumped more than 40 per cent. Despite the drop in bed numbers, stressed staff are dealing with hundreds of thousands more patients each year.

Australian Medical Association state president Dr Mark Yates said Victorian hospitals were running at nearly 95 per capacity and struggling to cope. "What we need to see is an increase in the number of beds in Victoria so that our hospitals can run more efficiently," Dr Yates said. He said the biggest loss of beds was across intensive care departments.

Ben Hart, spokesman for acting Health Minister Gavin Jennings, said a worldwide shortage of intensive care nurses was responsible for the lack of intensive care beds in Victoria. According to figures from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the number of public hospital beds dropped 184 from 1996-97 to 2003-04.

Opposition health spokeswoman Helen Shardey said the drastic shortage of beds was putting patients at risk. "Where are these beds? What's happened to them, why aren't they available to patients who need them? The Government needs to fess up," Ms Shardey said. "The Bracks Government promised an extra 900 hospital beds and not only have they not delivered on that promise, but bed numbers are still going down. "That causes enormous problems and huge blockages in the system: elective surgery is cancelled, the emergency department is under pressure, ambulances are put on bypass. "No excuses should be accepted by the public."

In the eight years to 2003-04 there was a 31.9 per cent increase in the number of patients admitted to hospital. In 2003-04, 1,187,529 patients were admitted to hospital in Victoria. While the number of people admitted for at least one night rose just 3.5 per cent to 510,713 patients in the latest figures, the number of patients admitted for day procedures rose more than 60 per cent to 652,364 in 2003-04. According to the State Government's Hospital Services Report, elective surgery waiting lists blew out 40 per cent.

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Foreigners get free surgery on Medicare

Sick foreigners are using the Medicare cards of Australian citizens to get free medical treatment in our hospitals. The Medicare fraud, which is costing taxpayers millions of dollars a year, is possible because our outdated Medicare cards carry no proof of identity. A Daily Telegraph investigation has found a Victorian man was convicted and fined for allowing his father, a foreigner, to use his Medicare card to claim benefits for laser eye treatments and medical consultations worth more than $3300. He told investigators he had committed the fraud because he could not afford to pay for his father's treatment when he came to visit Australia.

A Sydney woman discovered last year that someone received a free kidney operation using her Medicare card after it was stolen. She only discovered the fraud when she visited her specialist for a routine appointment and he asked her how she was feeling after the surgery.

In 2003-04 Medicare Australia investigated 137 reports of members of the public defrauding Medicare. A recent Auditor General's report found 500,000 Medicare cards were still registered to patients who had died. Some citizens have two Medicare cards - one which lists them as a male, the other as a female.

It is not just foreigners who are using stolen Medicare cards to defraud taxpayers. In Western Australia a man has been jailed for 12 months on 80 counts of fraud when he was found to have used another person's Medicare card to get taxpayers to pay for medical services and narcotics. A deregistered Queensland doctor used 21 stolen identities involving Medicare cards to get hold of 19,650 morphine tablets. The fraud cost the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme $50,000 and the tablets had a street value of $2 million. Police in Western Australia have uncovered an organised crime syndicate that was using multiple identities and Medicare cards to get taxpayers to pay for medical services. The fraud is estimated to have been worth more than $19,000. These are just some of the fraud cases that have been uncovered by Medicare Australia but the full scale of the problem could be much larger.

Medicare says less than 1 per cent of the $9 billion worth of claims a year it pays out are fraudulent but that still means fraud could be costing taxpayers up to $90 million a year. Human Services Minister Joe Hockey will soon take to Cabinet plans for a new Medicare smartcard that would carry a person's photograph and other identification and help combat Medicare fraud. The enhanced identity safeguards would make it difficult for an imposter or a non-taxpaying foreigner to use another person's Medicare card to claim rebates or get free public hospital treatment.

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