Disbelief, confusion over govt’s job cuts claim
Health groups have expressed disbelief about State Government claims that none of the nearly 1,000 health job cuts forecast in last week’s budget would come from “frontline” services.
The 2015 budget papers show that 981 full-time equivalent health staff are to be cut during the next financial year.
South Australian Salaried Medical Officers’ Association President Dr David Pope said it would not be possible to quarantine job cuts of that scale to SA Health administration.
“To say that it’s not frontline services (where jobs will be lost) would be wrong in my view,” Pope said.
He said the State Government’s Transforming Health project “involves cutting nursing staff from various sites”.
“Some of these FTE cuts are meant to come through Transforming Health, however … there is no detail about that,” he said.
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The experience in previous budgets shows SA Health has consistently failed to reduce its staff numbers in line with Treasury targets.
SA Branch director of operations and strategy for the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation Rob Bonner told InDaily his inquiries to the Government about the expected cuts failed to yield any detail about where they may fall.
“There’s no way that you could make those kind of cuts in staff without reducing services,” said Bonner.
“If that number of employees were to be cut from the system without improvements to efficiency along the way, then you would be talking about dozens of beds being closed to achieve them.
“We’re talking multiple wards, achieving that kind of number.
“There just aren’t that number of people in head offices or whatever else of health that could be cut without that flowing through to the frontline delivery end.”
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However, Bonner said some effienciences were already emerging from early reforms as part of the Transforming Health process.
“There is some evidence that some of the changes that have already been made to patient pathways have already had some gains in terms of length of stay,” he said.
Opposition health spokesperson Stephen Wade told InDaily it was hard to believe the State Government’s commitment that no doctors or nurses would be sacked.
“According to Treasurer Koutantonis none of them (who lose their jobs) will be doctors and nurses,” said Wade.
“To me that is hard to believe.
“You’re talking about 3.2 per cent of the workforce.
“The government’s record over the past 13 years gives me no confidence that they can achieve these cuts without sacking doctors and nurses, and that will have an impact on care.”
Wade said it was difficult to ascertain where the job cuts would come from using the budget papers because last year the Government transferred the roles of hundreds of bureaucrats to be included in local health networks.
“The 450 is a confounding factor,” he said.
“We need more than the budget papers to be sure about the impact.”
An SA Health spokesperson told InDaily in a statement this morning that: “full-time equivalent reductions budgeted for in 2015-16 include already announced reductions to head office staff and reductions as a result of Commonwealth funding cuts and the ending of a number of National Partnership Agreements on June 30”.
“The budgeted reductions are consistent with previous years’ efficiency targets.”
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