Hospital report lists sweeping reforms

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A LONG-AWAITED report recommends major surgery for Australia's health system, but stops short of recommending a full federal takeover of the states' hospitals.

The final version of the 300-page National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission report will be released by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in Canberra on Monday.

News Limited newspapers said the report lists initiatives including:

- standalone elective surgery hospitals to help cut hospital waiting lists;

- a proposal to compel the elderly to sell their homes to secure a nursing home bed;

- a subsidised dental care scheme;

- an onsite nurse for every school to encourage children to eat well and exercise; and,

- 12 targets under which every Australian should get an ambulance within 15 minutes, a GP appointment within two days, and elective surgery within three months.

The report has called for a 15 per cent increase in the number of public hospital beds in Australia but has not called on the commonwealth to take over state health responsibilities, News Limited said.

But it has suggested the federal government might need to fully fund public health services.

Fairfax newspapers said the report claimed that hospital errors in Australia cost 4,550 lives a year.

The commission's report found safety issues, the availability of hospital beds, waiting times and inefficiencies as areas that need to improve.

Halving "adverse events" such as hospital-borne infections, medication mix-ups, drug side effects and patient falls would save the system $1 billion a year, according to Fairfax.

Mr Rudd has warned the states and territories that a takeover was still on his government's agenda if they did not cooperate with a national reform plan.

"We leave open the option of going to a referendum to seek a mandate from the people," he told reporters in Melbourne on Sunday.

The government previously had set the states and territories an end of June 2009 deadline to improve the performance of public hospitals, leading to suggestions it had gone cold on the idea of a takeover.

Mr Rudd said the government was standing by its original undertaking.

"That is what we said. We intend to roll up our sleeves and get on with the job."

Health Minister Nicola Roxon says the report proposes some "very innovative solutions" to reform the nation's public hospital system.

"We're excited about that," she told ABC Radio on Monday, adding the system can't "just be patched-up".

"The report makes absolutely clear that we have to reform the system to deliver better outcomes to patients," Ms Roxon said.

Wholesale reform of the system, and not a bandaid response, was needed, Ms Roxon said.

"The time for reform is now, we are up to that task."