The ACT health budget for this financial year will be cut and jobs and probably services will be affected.
The cut is 2.5 per cent. Health will receive $219.2 million from the Consolidated Fund in the 1992-93 ACT Budget to be brought down by the Chief Minister and Treasurer, Rosemary Follett, on September 15.
The information comes in a departmental document apparently prepared either for the Chief Minister or the Minister for Health.
The $219.2 million compares with $221 million last year. After allowances for one-off payments, award allowances and transfer of functions, it is estimated that the difference will be “”a 2.5 per cent reduction to provide the same level of service”.
The document says that total recurrent budget (presumably from all sources, including health users) is $248.5 million.
The head of the ACT Department of Health, Gillian Biscoe, would not comment on the document yesterday.
The document summarises the budget’s “”positives” as: the commissioning of a second linear accelerator, the funding of the Casemix development unit, funding for initiatives in mental-health services, funding for the nurse information-management system.
The “”negatives” are: “”potentially significant reductions in services due to financial constraints (being determined), reduction in employment levels.”
There is no funding for a cardiac-thoracic unit. Major heart-surgery cases will still have to go to Sydney.
The health cuts come at a time of overall constraints as the Commonwealth Grants Commission insists the ACT comes back to state-level funding.
However, according to the document, the 1992-93 budget contains $1.6 million for increased Commonwealth/state programs and $1.7 million for new policy initiatives.
Further details are not available because ACT Health will not comment.
However, ACT health administration has had the difficult task of coping with staff and union pressure and some public dissatisfaction over four years of decreased federal funding.
The second linear accelerator for nuclear medicine has been discussed for some time. The Casemix development unit and the nurse information management system are not tangible medical machinery, but bureaucratic structures aimed at helping fund and run the hospitals better.
The document said, “”All acute care will continue at its current high standard and activity in elective hospital and community health services will be provided at the highest levels Health can maintain.”
The secretary of the ACT branch of the Australian Nurses Federation, Colleen Duff, said that, if there was a 2.5 per cent cut, it would not be possible to provide the same level of service.
Her union was already in dispute with the Board of Health over staff levels, and that was under the present funding.
“”The ANF is prepared to co-operate looking for efficiencies, but the bottom line was no job losses,” she said.
Nurses were already suffering. Some were being asked to work double shifts, casual and agency nurses were being used. Yet there were unemployed nurses out there.
“”Demand on the system is too great already,” she said. “”The amalgamation of the hospitals has been too quick. Service is already compromised because of lack of funds, and patients are being turned away because there were not enough beds.”
Also, the time patients spent in hospital was decreasing. There was no hospital convalescence now, which meant all patients needed greater care. It also meant resources could not be taken from community nursing because there was greater demand from recently released patients.
Ms Duff recognised that it was not an easy task for governments.
“”But essentials must come first,” she said “”And health and education are essentials, especially for a Labor Government. The people of the ACT are being short-changed if they are going to be asked to take more health cuts.”
She hoped that the extra money for health in the last Federal Budget might help, but “”no-one knows how that will work out yet”.
The president of the ACT Medical Officers Association, Dr Peter Collignon, said there would be problems for the next several years because the Federal Government was cutting about $5 million annually to the ACT. That meant cutting services or working more efficiently. But getting fewer people to do the same work was getting harder, so trimming some services was inevitable.
The association represents salaried doctors in the ACT.
“”The Federal Government doesn’t give enough money to health, but the state and territory governments get the flak,” he said.
The people who relied on public health were suffering.
Dr Collignon would like to get the politics and ideology out of health. The cutting of money by the Federal Government was going to result in confrontation, disharmony and public disapproval.