Page 3657 - Week 12 - Thursday, 13 October 1994
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It also says, basically, that the remaining 10 will open when they can get staff. You assume that that means that 14 of the 24 beds that the Minister promised would be opened by 1 June are opened by October.
Shall we run through those beds? The document outlines them on the previous page, as the Minister did in the house in June.
Mr Connolly: "Promised in June to open"; not "promised to open by 1 June".
MRS CARNELL: Promised in June, to open by 1 July.
Mr Connolly: You said, "Promised to open by 1 June".
MRS CARNELL: I am sorry; 1 July. I am sorry, Minister; I got it wrong. I apologise for saying "1 June" instead of "1 July". The beds that he promised to open by 1 July included three surgical beds in urology. Unfortunately, the doctors cannot find them. Obviously, they are open somewhere else, but they do not seem to be anywhere obvious. There are the 11 paediatric beds, and I will speak about those at greater length later. There are the four high dependency beds that have never been opened. The four oncology beds have a tendency to open and close a bit; so, I will give the Minister the benefit of the doubt that they are actually open. The two beds for the treatment of bone-marrow transplant patients certainly are not opened, because we actually do not have the service in place just yet.
Mr Connolly: No; because we are training the staff.
MRS CARNELL: I am just making a comment on the beds that you, Minister, said would be open by 1 July. So far we are giving the Minister the benefit of the doubt that four of the 24 are open - not the 14 of the 24 that are actually referred to in the Minister's tabled statement.
I suspect that where the problem actually comes in is in relation to the 11 paediatric beds, Madam Speaker. If members are interested, they should look at the second page of that document. Towards the bottom - in fact, in the last paragraph - it says:
In relation to paediatric bed numbers, the WVH bulletin shows a total of 49 paediatric beds at WVH in August 1994. Since that time, a further 7 paediatric beds have opened (these are included in the 11 beds that I refer to above).
You have to assume immediately that four, at least, of the 11 have never been opened. The document continues:
In addition, a further 4 paediatric beds are amongst the 16 beds scheduled to open when staff have been recruited.
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