The LNP has pledged an extra half a billion dollars for Queensland's health budget and to bring ramping below 30 per cent in four years if it wins the state election.
On Monday, David Crisafulli unveiled his party's $590 million health plan, which includes real-time health data, ending the maternity bypass at Biloela and Cooktown and 34,200 extra health workers by 2032.
Queensland Health data for April to June this year shows 44.7 per cent of patients were not transferred off ambulance stretchers within 30 minutes.
Mr Crisafulli said his party would reduce that to a third within their first term.
LNP says plan a 'cure', as Labor accuses party of 'handing in our homework'
Meanwhile, Labor says it wants to get ramping back to 28 per cent — as it was before COVID-19 — if re-elected, but gave no timeframe.
Labor has also committed to reopening maternity services at Cooktown by mid-2025, and says it'll bring services back to Biloela.
The LNP leader said Labor had overseen a health "crisis" that his plan would "cure".
"It is a crisis, and Queenslanders know it, and they are living it," he said.
"This plan is thorough, it is detailed, and it is well-planned. Health workers are calling for it, patients are calling for it."
The LNP has also promised to stabilise waitlists within 12 months, "fast-track" trainees into paid work, and lower the attrition rate for healthcare workers.
They've also committed to seeing through Labor's new hospital build.
Speaking from Bundaberg on the second week of the campaign trail, Health Minister Shannon Fentiman said Mr Crisafulli was trying to "slip into government without actual policies".
Ms Fentiman said a lot of the LNP's plan was already underway under Labor.
She said Labor had committed $1.1 billion in their "patients first" plan, as well as $14 billion to build new hospitals.
"It's the LNP handing in our homework, but only committing less than half of the funds that we really do need to invest to improve patient outcomes and patient flow," she said.
Hospital focus overlooks rural Queensland, RDAQ says
Rural Doctors' Association of Queensland said both major parties had applied "a broad brush".
President Danielle Allan said primary care couldn't just be a federal responsibility.
"We can no longer think that federal and general practice is one area, and hospitals and state government is another.
"If we generally want to improve outcomes for our entire Queensland residents, then we need to stop that rhetoric."
LoadingDr Allan said the LNP's policy "largely" forgot rural and remote Queenslanders and focused instead on metropolitan and regional hospitals.
She also suggested that the government buy buildings to cut the cost of running GP clinics in remote and rural Queensland.
'Devil is in the detail' of workforce plan
Australian Medical Association Queensland president and GP, Dr Nick Yim, said the LNP's $590 pledge was a "significant" amount.
Asked if the LNP's goal to bring ramping down by 15 percentage points in its first term was achievable, he said it would rely on "the implementation of multiple strategies".
Meanwhile, the "devil is in the detail" of a plan to add tens of thousands to the health workforce, he said.
"What is the plan to recruit these healthcare professionals, what is the plan to also retain them?" he asked.
Dr Yim also wants Labor to match the LNP's commitment to a payroll tax exemption for GPs.
He said the party's plan for a 25 per cent loading for some staff to make sure hospitals were "fully operational" seven days a week was "promising".
The LNP says the loading will make sure patients aren't staying longer in hospital than they need to because there's no-one to discharge them.
Call for 'radical restructuring'
More staff and beds were "simply unsustainable empty promises" unless major parties dealt with the system's "toxic culture", "bureaucratic bloat" and burnout, the Nurses Professional Association of Queensland said.
"Decades of expanding bureaucratic centralised control has failed our healthcare system," president Kara Thomas said.
"We're calling for a radical restructuring – locally run autonomous hospitals and elimination of bureaucratic bloat to fund better nurse pay and improved service delivery."
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