Hospital plan 'to cut bureaucrats' | National News | Breaking National News in Australia

Good!! Reducing the funding and bureaucratic heirarchy from three levels to two can only be a good thing.

So...now we can have Stronger Regional Health Services which Save us Money. Just like the Council amalgamations gave us stronger councils which saved us money. Didn't they?

Will it mean additional bureaucracy? Hopefully not. It depends on how much involvement the State governments still have in health administration. We should be able to see the end of one entire tier of centralised bureaucracy...ie the State Health Departments.

The trade-off is additional people at a regional level ...and more Federal bureaucrats. Let's hope that we lose more on the swings than we pick up on the roundabouts.

Heard all these promises before from the state, I am not expecting anything to change going by Rudds track record.

Thank goodness! It certainly is about time this happened.

Like most things government I have trouble seeing how they can make it worse, until they do!
I once heard an interesting 'take' on public service staff levels. Move half the chairs out and those that come first get the seats and keep the jobs.
Not sound management? And what we have now is?
If they did this in hospital offices there'd be more parking for those that need to go there for treatment, and visitors.
I wonder if anything else would really suffer?
Cynical? Me????

Another layer of government - just what we need. NOT!

Get rid of state governments. They were just a compromise for federation anyway.

More hands in my pockets. More communist snouts in the trough.

The taxpayer is the loser - again.

As Councils are brainless and State Parliaments talentless it is indeed high time the Federal Parliament took over both the building and the running of Public Hospitals .

I can see it now.

More federal public servants in the new super health department along with the guarantee that no state public servant will loose their jobs as part of the reshuffle.

Yep this should cut the bureaucracy and leave more money that can be spent where it needs to be spent.

Even if you believe Rudd with his "There will be no net increase in bureaucracy under this reform" it is still no good. The bureaucracy needs to be cut considerably to get it all to work.

The political spin and thinking in this country gets worse by the minute.

Sorry NO and NO again the pool of Bureaucrats and the middle mans is only to worsen, channelling funds to their preferred friends, area, favourite friend doctors and them self's by living like pigs in mud..!
We have seen those Insulation schemes with emerging scams in falsifying records and over priced quoting to cash in. All collapsed..eh..!
There will be hospitals shutting operation just for the sake of a new created culture which will be breeding up scams, money laundering and wrong preferences to those who miss out on most need funds...!
Increase of Doctors and Nurses is just a thing in the past and have to be seen where they like to go and stay..?
Who want's to be in those first aid out-posts with NO state of the art gear or bush tradesmen repaired equipment in whoop whoop..???
Didn't I predict the Free-Fall Year 2010...eh..!

No matter what your opinion is about health care we all know the system can’t stay the way it is. The opposition have never made any major reform in their last terms to even come close to fixing this system so we all need to take a step back and give a new system a fair go.

We can’t hide behind the fact that the current system simply is outdated and no longer will carry the burden of our aging population. Even if the initial process is flawed it will be something to build upon.

Having the guaranteed federal paying power will ultimately have more security for all states once operational. If it’s going to be better or not at this stage really is a waiting game.

Quibbling over all or any shortfalls in advance is really just being negative at this stage. Every new system and especially such a major reform such as this will take a huge step to integrate no matter what anyone says.

People need to open their eyes and realise reform has to take place no matter what otherwise our existing system has nowhere to go at all.

Rudd's proposal will not reduce the bureaucracy, it may even increase it.

This proposal sound like another Peter Garrett insulation blunder, in this case a Nicola Roxon nightmare.

Wait for the GST to be raised by at least 5 percent, death and land taxes introduced.

Talk about damned if you, damned if you don't.

We have recently had an "Education Revolution" which funnelled billions of dollars of taxpayer money into private pockets (and in the process arrested any creep towards affordability of housing) while providing NOT ONE SOLITARY EXTRA TEACHER, not one upgraded teacher qualification, not one kid to be better taught. Some revolution! But no doubt some of the signs will still be readable and some of the money will still be jingling in pockets come election time.

And now we are being offered a "Heath Revolution".
But one which starts from the premise of "no net increase in bureaucracy". In all human history no change in public administration has ever resulted in less, or even the same number of, bureaucrats.

Even the much vaunted "managing doing more with less" so beloved of the bureaucracy's gab fests only means managing more bureacracy, spinmeisters and PR flacks to conceal the fact that there are many less coal shovellers working harder, but ultimately able to shovel less coal.

Recent figures from The Dept. of Health showed that we are "served" by twice as many health bureaucrats as medical staff, so even if you believe the "no net increase" fantasy, that's a hell of a place to be starting from.

For all of the years I worked around Australia, with parties of 10 to 30 or so people, we needed the help of the Public Health systems, from time to time. Quensland's system was always excellent and a cut above others. And it operated then on lotteries money and local hospital boards' administration, and hardly a bureaucrat to be found, anywhere.

Yes, I know public health is a much more complex and costly matter now than then, but the model worked.

And besides, it might be as successful in improving health care as the "Education Revolution" was in lifting our kids actual educational standards, and it might be as relatively costly.