NSW public hospitals below par with obsolete equipment

The latest report from the New South Wales (NSW) Auditor-General office offers more evidence that the state's public hospital systems are falling below par in some respects.

The report has found that five of the state's eight area health services have failed to meet the government's own benchmark for triage patients.

Triage is a procedure used to assess and treat emergency department patients and has three stages; triage three patients are those who are in a potentially life-threatening condition and need treatment within 30 minutes.

The report also found that five of the state's eight area health services were also over budget for the last financial year, ranging from $1.8 million for Hunter New England to $13.8 million for Northern Sydney and Central Coast.

The Auditor-General's report also reveals that much of current hospital equipment is outdated, worthless and obsolete, at least from an accounting standpoint.

However, NSW Health Minister Reba Meagher says NSW emergency wards are more efficient than those in other states and the state's hospitals are meeting, or exceeding, the national benchmarks in four of the five emergency department triage categories.

NSW Health says the minister, spends $180 million a year on equipment upgrades and replacement.

Plans by the North Coast Area Health Service to cut nurse and bed numbers in the regions hospitals have now been questioned in light of the report showing it had failed to meet performance benchmarks.

Judith Kiejda, assistant general secretary of the NSW Nurses Association says the latest auditor general's report into NSW Health showed that in 2006-07 the North Coast Area Health Service only managed to admit 78 per cent of patients requiring admission to a bed within eight hours of first seeing a doctor; the departments benchmark is 80 per cent within eight hours.

Kiejda says the 80 per cent benchmark is lenient enough and the North Coast Area Health Service (NCAHS) is struggling to meet that level with its current bed numbers and she queries how the conversion of 86 current acute beds to surge beds, which are not to be permanently staffed, can be justified.

Under the health service's plan, 12 beds and a number of nursing positions would be cut from the Grafton and Maclean hospitals.

The NSW Nurses Association says surge beds should be in addition to current beds, not a substitute for current beds.