• Philip Davies

07 April 2010We need to be careful in choosing what to manage locally, writes Philip Davies in the Brisbane Line
 
IN THE ENTRANCE lobby of the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital is a plaque, dated 1923, which commemorates the (no doubt good) works of the Committee and Officers of the Lady Lamington Hospital. More than eighty years on, our political masters seem eager to resurrect such worthy bodies.
 
In announcing his Government’s plans for hospital reform Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has proposed the establishment of new statutory authorities. They are to be known as “Local Hospital Networks”. Each will have a Governing Council and a Chief Executive Officer and they will be responsible for making decisions on the day to day operations of hospitals, managing budgets and “delivering on agreed services and performance standards”.
 
For his part, opposition leader Tony Abbott has suggested that public hospitals, or at least those in New South Wales and Queensland, should be managed by “community boards”, accountable to the local population...

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Philip Davies is Professor in Health Systems and Policy at the University of Queensland.