Nicola Roxon has famously said that she is not the Minister for Doctors, as if you needed telling.
No, she is the minister for Midwives and Nurses, and now it appears she is the Minister for Administrators as well.
I was gobsmacked to read today that the public hospital system has 10,000 more clerks than doctors. The figures from the AIHW show that Australia has something like 37,000 administrators but only 27,000 doctors. What do they all do, exactly?
And why is this pathological excess of administrators not being addressed in a serious and systematic way as part of the government's health reforms. After all, we have benchmarks about the minimum number of doctors we should have per head of population. Has anyone ever done a study of how many administrators we should have for every thousand patients?
The health reform commission has made it clear that it wants to see individual doctors and hospitals held more accountable for their workload and outcomes. Can we not have the same accountability for administrators? If the aim of adminstrators is to ensure smooth and efficient running of health services, let's audit them on that and make them meet tough accreditation standards for cutting red tape, removing barriers to good care and improving communication.
In the last few years doctors have been the subject to an increasing tide of criticism from within government and the bureaucracies. It's time doctors started to fight back. When Ms Roxon claims that doctor's fees have doubled, let's ask how much taxpayer spending on management consultants, reports and committees has gone up.
I would love to know how much the government spends on paper and printer cartridges on a year by year basis. Perhaps we need to have some caps on that rather than on funding for angiography or treatments for macular degeneration. And if they run out of paper, well they can always do their calculations on the back of an envelope. That seems to be how their sums are done at the moment anyway.
Comments
I aggree with alot of what is said in here but it's simple.. there are so many administraters because it takes so many to cover up all the screw ups. The administraters are usually stupid and out of touch, but the things they get some doctors out of are often horrific. In my opinion the only people who are really losing are the patients, the tax payers... Everyone else is getting rich and they're getting poorer. Posted by sf on Tuesday, 22 September 2009
Bureaucratic accretion is an insidious process. Over a 10 year period from the 80s to 90s there was a push for greater efficiency. To this end they felt there was a need to have more bureaucrats. The number of clerks on staff increased by 1/3. After 10 years they found a need to close 1/3 of hospital beds to sustain wages and salaries. No one within this process ever questions what is happening. They are like cancer. Pointless, relentless, terminal. While we are on this theme, in 1995 when the then most expensive hospital in Australia, the New Children's Hospital Westmead ($400M) had 1500 computer terminals and 300 beds...????. Mindless stupidity abounds Posted by Thomas Lyons on Monday, 21 September 2009
View As Web Page It's a pity Michael,
Lets ask Mr Rudd we have a seperate minister for doctors, as Ms Roxon showed extreme ineligibilty to be our minister. The new minister can be paid from the saved money from the axed number of managers.
Lets get organized and stop this bullying against us. Posted by Saidul, Canberra on Sunday, 20 September 2009
Keep in mind that a lot of senior nurses, who feel that they have outgrown the nursing of patients, become administrators. Also keep in mind that whenever a seemingly dumb error is made, the solution proposed is to add more paperwork and more layers of bureaucracy to ensure better 'control.'
One solution might be to enrol senior nurses (those who feel they have outgrown nursing) in a graduate medical course with appropriate recognition of prior learning. That way we can remove the pressure for inappropriate and unsafe task substitution, as well as remove much of the pressure for creation of unnecessary administrative posts.
Secondly, when we finally change from a paper-based records system to a computer-based system, we need to seize the opportunity not only to eliminate unnecessary paperwork, but also unnecessary paper workers. The problem is that these paperworkers, along with nurses who feel that they have outgrown nursing, seem to be the ones with the Minister's ear. Posted by Student Chris on Saturday, 19 September 2009
