There are lots of different ways to understand this issue.<\/p>\n
Looking at the total amount given to WA Health each financial year by the state government doesn’t paint the full picture, because it doesn’t include Commonwealth funding, but it illustrates an important point and gives us a long-term view of the situation.<\/p>\n
The darker line shows what the spend would look like adjusted for inflation.<\/p>\n
The health budget rises each year, so the government can always claim to to be making “record” investments.<\/p>\n
Since 1999\/2000 it’s grown 313 per cent, which sounds huge.<\/p>\n
But it doesn’t account for inflation.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The WA Health budget rises each year, but against inflation and a rising population, is it keeping pace? (ABC News: Jake Sturmer)<\/p>\n
Factor that in and you get a 99 per cent increase over the same period.<\/p>\n
But that misses another important measure \u2014 how many people the health system is caring for.<\/p>\n
Using the state’s population as an estimate, budget dollars per person have risen over the last quarter of a century by around 158 per cent.<\/p>\n
But factor in inflation and that growth gets much smaller, at 24 per cent per person in 2024\/25 dollars.<\/p>\n
Of course, this is an oversimplification \u2014 it’s hard to capture the complexity of the health system over a long period.<\/p>\n
Technology has improved, making some treatments cheaper and quicker.<\/p>\n
At the same time, new pathways for treatment have opened, creating new patients who might not have been able to be treated previously, which adds cost to the system.<\/p>\n
All of this is even more of a problem because the percentage of West Australians aged over 65 at the end of each financial year is growing and the aged care system isn’t coping, forcing some into hospital emergency departments.<\/p>\n
Doctors say all this has eaten away at reserve capacity in the health system, meaning when an event largely out of your control comes around \u2014 like a particularly bad flu season this year <\/a>\u2014 there’s little wiggle room left.<\/p>\n Public hospitals in Perth cancelled some elective surgeries last week as emergency departments were put under pressure.\u00a0 (ABC News: Keane Bourke)<\/p>\n “As long as we can move patients through the emergency department, we have flow to see the new patients coming in, we can cope with those busier periods,” Australasian College of Emergency WA Deputy Faculty Chair Eve Foreman said.<\/p>\n “When we can’t move the patients out of the emergency department into the hospital \u2026 that’s when we have issues with ED feeling busier than it would do normally.”<\/p>\n Taking the pulse of WA\u2019s health system<\/a><\/p>\n Western Australia\u2019s ailing health system has once again been in the spotlight this week, but the remedy to its problems remains elusive.<\/p>\n ED patients are by-and-large those most in need of medical care, so hospitals have to find a way to meet that demand.<\/p>\n So when there’s a higher-than-usual number of very ill patients being rushed into emergency departments \u2014 as there was last week \u2014 hospitals have few levers to pull but to cancel elective surgery to free up space.<\/p>\n “It’s part and parcel of managing a health system which is, at the moment, managing one of the most severe winter flu seasons on record, so we thank people for their patience,” Premier Roger Cook said on Thursday, adding it was always doctors who made decisions about how urgent a surgery is.<\/p>\n That, of course, ignores the fact that if it were up to doctors there wouldn’t be elective surgeries in the first place because there would be enough hospital beds and operating theatres and staff to treat people when they need it.<\/p>\n Last week the WA government announced a $50 million fund to fix ageing hospitals.\u00a0 (ABC News: Keane Bourke)<\/p>\n “If there was a quick fix or a silver bullet, someone would have found it,” Amber-Jade Sanderson, who was Health Minister until March, said during the week.<\/p>\n It’s why the increased funding to date hasn’t solve the problem, and why experts continue to call for wholesale system reform, from access to GPs to catch problems early through to expanded hospital capacity and more discharge options instead of keeping people in hospital beds once they’re better<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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