How many acute care beds are there in NSW North Coast hospitals?

North Coast Area Health Service (NCAHS) covers an area of 25,570 square kilometres extending from Port Macquarie in the south, Queensland in the north and westward to the Great Dividing Range and there are over 480,675 people living within these boundaries according to the area health service.

Also according to the NCAHS website in 2005 there was a total of 21 public hospitals, with approx. 1384 acute care beds offered at the public/private hospitals in the Area.

Which works out at no more than 2.9 acute care beds to every 1,000 North Coast residents and, even less available to patients without private medical insurance if one was able to extract private hospital beds from the bundled NCAHS 2005 figure.

In 2007 Peter Roberts and Paul Cunningham told a NSW inquiry that NSW had only 1.1 acute care beds in private hospitals per 1,000 population and 2.7 acute care beds in public hospitals per 1,000 people.

Now Professor Peter Collingdon informs us in 2009 that:
In Australia we have 38% less beds than in 1981 when there were 6.4 acute care hospital beds for every 1000 people. There are now only four beds per 1000 people available. Only 2.7 of these beds are available in the public sector -- where the sickest patients are looked after. [Crikey.com.au,20 July 2009]

Which indicates that little is changing for the better in health services when it comes to bed numbers.

Given the relentless NCAHS cost-cutting, staff and bed reduction drive of recent years, perhaps Chief Executive Officer Chris Crawford could favour us all with details of the current ratio of acute care beds in NSW North Coast public hospitals to every 1,000 head of population.