REDLAND Hospital has again missed out on major funding in the state budget, despite an extra $176million for the Metro South Health Area and additional money for Springfield and Logan hospitals.
Out of the state's total health budget of $15.27billion, Metro South Health Area, which includes Redland Hospital, was allocated $2.194billion, up 8.7 per cent on the year before.
Health Minister Cameron Dick said the largest slice of the Metro South budget, $6.9million, was to reduce waiting times for outpatients.
He said the southern district was performing well and reducing specialist outpatient long wait list.
He allocated an extra $5.5 million to increase access to Mater Private Hospital Springfield in a bid to further cut public waiting lists.
The new Springfield hospital was in the public spotlight when Bowman MP Andrew Laming revealed this month Redland Hospital was sending endoscopy and colonoscopy patients there.
Mr Laming said Redland patients were given the option of waiting a year for treatment in Redlands or getting seen immediately at Springfield.
Logan Hospital was also a major winner with $4.9 million to establish a nine-bed Clinical Decision Unit and a further $1.9 million to increase staffing at the hospiutal's adult emergency department.
It will also get $1.2 million to increase the number of beds from 16 to 20 and staffing at the Logan Hospital Paediatric Inpatient Unit.
The lack of spending and money to open up extra beds at Redland Hospital raised the ire of Cleveland MP Mark Robinson.
“The government seems more interested in a bloated Queensland Health bureaucracy again rather than delivering better patient outcomes like reducing elective surgery waiting lists and dental waiting lists and the waiting times in emergency departments," he said.
“The LNP government started new initiatives such as a palliative care service for Redland Hospital.
"This failed Labor budget reveals no new initiatives such as an Intensive Care Unit, or new beds.
“The LNP government employed more frontline nurses to staff the newly expanded ED facility at Redland Hospital but Labor kowtows to their union masters and employs more health bureaucrats."
