Australian Greens Health spokesperson, Senator Rachel Siewert says the Government’s announcement of $96 million to increase the workforce for emergency departments is welcomed but will be ineffective in fixing the issue of patient flow and the access block to essential services.

“Patient presentations are increasing to our emergency departments, but without having significantly more beds upstairs to put these patients into, extra money for nurses and doctors won’t change patient flows,” Senator Rachel Siewert said today.

“Healthcare funding is currently increasing at a rate of 9-10% per year. With an ageing population and more chronic disease in our community, that rate is economically unsustainable and needs to be dealt with through effective investment,” said Senator Siewert.

Dr Geoff Couser, Greens federal candidate for Denison and staff emergency specialist at the Royal Hobart Hospital says the announcement lacks the vision needed to effectively improve health services.

“While it’s great to see more funding for emergency departments, neither the Government nor the opposition seems to understand the issue of access block, which is choking our public hospitals,” said Dr Couser.

Senator Siewert says The Greens have consistently called for more funding for mental health, which once again doesn’t get a mention in the latest round of funding announcements.

“We are calling for more mental health specialists in emergency departments; these would be 24 hour on-duty and on-call mobile crisis teams working as part of primary health care organisations. We need to see more funding for primary health care and better integration of our health services to keep people well and out of hospital in the first place,” concluded Senator Siewert.