A major pay rise for NSW nurses is possible without hurting the state budget by using billions of dollars in untapped federal funds, a union says. or signup to continue reading Inaccurate and inefficient hospital reporting has blocked access to $3 billion in commonwealth funding over the past five years, according to analysis by Deloitte and released by the NSW Nurses and Midwives' Association on Monday. Union boss, Shaye Candish, said the missing billions were down to a long-running failure to capture accurate patient data.
"Information that's collated when we care for patients is reported through our hospital system and, at times, it generates commonwealth funding through some of the arrangements that the Commonwealth and the state governments have to one another," she told ABC radio. "Here in NSW, we don't have appropriate systems to really reflect the care that's already been provided and the consequence of that is that NSW has missed out on over $3 billion of commonwealth funding in the last five years." The "technical inefficiency" was reflecting a rosier picture of patient health than was the reality, Ms Candish said.
Savings of $1.2 billion per year could be achieved by NSW Health if treatments and patient data were processed accurately, on top of other measures to reduce waste, the report found. "The NSW treasurer can afford both higher wages and more nursing and midwifery positions, by removing systemic inefficiencies in the healthcare system," Ms Candish said.
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