2015-11-12
The Greens are backing the Auditor General’s call for a review into public hospital funding, after today’s report from the Auditor found a flawed funding model, meaning hospitals have no budget for capital expenditure.
The Greens say this model is resulting in extremely neglected hospitals, such as the Footscray Hospital, which has fallen victim to a lack of capital expenditure by governments who play politics with funding decisions.
"The Auditor has found the hospital funding model needs reform as it's putting hospitals constantly in deficit," said Victorian Greens Spokesperson for Health and MP for the Western Metropolitan Region, Colleen Hartland.
"Hospitals have no chance of making savings for maintaining the hospital infrastructure and equipment, and are therefore completely dependent on going cap in hand to the government every time they need to do minor works, let alone do major renovations.”
"The current funding model is creating situations like we see at the Footscray Hospital, where buildings are actually falling apart and the hospital can only get enough money from the Andrews Government to patch a few things up, but not enough to stop ward closures."
“We need a review and we need to do far more to take the politics out of funding decisions, particularly when it comes to infrastructure investment, so places like Footscray are no longer neglected,” said Ms Hartland.
For media comment: 96896373
View the Auditor General's report here.