Friday 12 June 2009
AREA HEALTH SERVICES CLOG UNATTACHED LIST: LABOR’S FAILED HEALTH STRUCTURES MUST GO
Revelations Health bureaucrats make up 42% of the unattached list prove Labor’s Area Health Services have failed, Shadow Minister for Health Jillian Skinner said today.
Freedom of Information documents obtained by the NSW Opposition show there are 615 public servants being paid without having a job. A total of 263 are from the health portfolio (42%), including 250 from the Area Health Services.
“The fact that nearly half the unattached list is clogged with health bureaucrats shows Labor’s Area Health Services have failed,” Mrs Skinner said.
“At a time when hospitals across the State are crying out for funds – after Nathan Rees stripped them of $64 million in funding in the Mini-Budget – paying people with no job is an absolute insult to our hardworking medical staff who are being rushed off their feet,” she said.
“Labor’s sycophantic relationship with their union masters means patients and medical staff suffer.
“Labor’s health portfolio is the biggest contributor to the wasteful unattached list which costs taxpayers $46 million a year.
“Health Minister John Della Bosca needs to justify keeping the Area Health Services when they produce outcomes as inefficient and wasteful as this.
“If John Della Bosca really cared about patients and medical staff, he’d abolish the Area Health Services and adopt our policy.
“We will remove Labor’s failed Area Health Services and replace them with smaller, community-focussed Health Districts to improve management of the State’s health system.
“Setting up smaller Health Districts will create a flatter administrative structure, restore honesty to the system through district boards, and remove an entire layer of Labor’s bureaucratic red tape.
“Our policy is all about getting administrators and managers out of ivory towers and putting them on the frontline to support our health workforce; it is cost neutral.
“Labor’s Area Health Services have failed. It’s time to remove them and reorganise health management in NSW to improve patient care, “ Mrs Skinner said.