Page 1130 - Week 04 - Thursday, 21 April 1994
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PUBLIC ACCOUNTS - STANDING COMMITTEE
Report on Auditor-General's Report No. 5 of 1993
MR KAINE (11.47): Madam Speaker, I present a report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts entitled "Review of Auditor-General's Report No. 5, 1993, Visiting Medical Officers", together with extracts of the minutes of proceedings. I move:
That the report be noted.
The Auditor-General in this report was dealing with the administration of visiting medical officers within the Health organisation. I want to make the point that the committee did not deal with the recent visiting medical officers dispute with the Government, and our report makes no mention of that. If it is the wish of the Assembly or anybody else that the committee should look at that matter, we can take it on as a separate inquiry. Generally speaking, the Auditor-General made some criticisms of the Health organisation in terms of the way the visiting medical officers are administered. There were some criticisms of whether or not the amounts being paid to visiting medical officers for the work they had done under their existing contracts were reasonable.
Some deficiencies in the administration were noted. However, the committee, in speaking to officers of the Health organisation, accepted that they were aware of the shortcomings and were doing whatever they could to overcome them. There was one matter that was in a sense outside their control. The Auditor-General commented that the records of visits by VMOs were often not sufficient to be able to establish whether the VMOs had been in attendance and had delivered a service or not. The VMOs made the point to the committee that their contracts did not oblige them to maintain such records, but in discussions with the VMOs they agreed that it was not unreasonable for the Government to expect that if VMOs visited a patient in one of our hospitals they would record the fact that they had been there and make some annotation on the records as to the kind of service they had delivered.
I was convinced, and I think the committee was convinced, that, despite the fact that there was an ongoing dispute with the VMOs at the time that this hearing was being conducted, the VMOs were not averse to assisting the Health organisation in maintaining proper records; that they were prepared to play their part in that. The committee was satisfied that the matters raised by the Auditor-General were being adequately addressed by the Health organisation and by the VMOs themselves. We will, of course, have a look at this matter in the future, to make sure that all of the corrective actions that were discussed with the committee have been taken.
I would think that the Auditor-General himself, at some future time, may well want to go back and review the situation as he found it and satisfy himself that everything is in order. The committee has no particular criticisms of the response from the people concerned. We have made a number of recommendations, and I believe that if those recommendations are picked up there should be no future problem in this regard. I commend the report to the Assembly.
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