Hunt urges Canberra to act as 74 locals left ‘languishing’ in hospital

Marty Hunt Member for Nicklin with Nicky Montgomery, Operations Manager at Kel and Co Care.

Nicklin MP Marty Hunt has renewed calls for the Federal Government to intervene after fresh figures revealed dozens of Sunshine Coast patients are stuck in hospital beds simply because they cannot access the federally funded care they are entitled to.

Speaking outside Nambour General Hospital with Kel and Co Care operations manager Nicky Montgomery, Mr Hunt said the situation was placing enormous pressure on staff, families and the wider health system.

“We are calling on the Federal Government to rescue stranded Queenslanders stuck in our hospital, because they don’t have NDIS funding or Aged Care funding that they are entitled to,” Mr Hunt said. “On the Sunshine Coast there’s 74 patients languishing in hospital because they can’t get access to the care they are entitled to – they deserve the dignity of care and it’s the Federal Government’s responsibility to provide that.”

New figures provided to the Gazette show the scale of the issue statewide. Across Queensland, 1,126 patients are stranded in public hospitals – almost 10 per cent of available beds – because they are waiting for federally funded services. Queensland Health estimates these older patients alone cost the system $1.91 million a day, with a further 290 younger NDIS patients adding another $660,000 daily.

To ease immediate pressure, the Queensland Government is funding 515 interim care beds at a cost of $581 million over two years. But Mr Hunt said that stop-gap measure will not solve the core problem.

Ms Montgomery said the bottleneck stems from long delays in approving aged care packages and NDIS plans.

“Right now across southeast Queensland we are seeing a lot of long-stay patients in the hospital system and we are certainly seeing a lot of re-admissions into the hospital system because they do not have the support in their homes that they need,” she said. “People are admitted to hospital, they’re treated, they’re stabilised and medically fit for discharge, but the process to get your aged care package or NDIS funding takes a vast amount longer than it does to get discharged from hospital.”

She said the result was vulnerable patients either being kept in hospital unnecessarily or being discharged without adequate support – only to end up back in the system.

In September, states received a new Commonwealth funding proposal that leaves Queensland $335 million worse off this year than what was agreed at National Cabinet in 2023.

“This is impacting our health staff, families and patients,” Mr Hunt said. “We need the Federal Government to step up and fix what they control.