Page 3934 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 9 November 1994
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Mrs Carnell: But that was because you had people in the beds.
MR CONNOLLY: Mrs Carnell, once again, just listen. You may - just may - learn something; although, after some time in this portfolio, I doubt it. We took a clinical decision - I did not take it; the clinical decision was taken by the hospital - that, given the extraordinary outbreak of that very aggressive viral disease which required very young children to be admitted to hospital and effectively put on a drip, we would cancel a lot of paediatric surgery in order to take all those beds that otherwise would have been used for elective paediatric surgery for those viral cases. This had an impact because those kids were in for a few days, whereas they may have been in for only day surgery. It also had an impact because a number of those beds in the paediatric ward, where we would normally have had surgical cases, were two-bed wards. We were often having just one child in those two-bed rooms for the period. I am also told that there was an anaesthetists conference in the early part of the year and that a lot of our anaesthetists were not here for a couple of days. This had an impact also.
I am advised, by my advisers, that we still expect to come in on our projection of throughput. We still expect, and we still are targeting, to come in on our budget. We are not going to slash $30m from the health budget, which is Mrs Carnell's promise - one that she is desperately seeking to run away from as she continues to run around promising Canberra everything: No taxes, more operations, more doctors, more nurses; more of everything, less of taxes. As is shown here, once again, they are a trivial little Opposition with very little to say. I am confident that we will meet our projected throughput target for this year. Our projected throughput target at the moment represents a very significant increase on what it was some years ago. Our productivity continues to increase.
MRS CARNELL: I have a supplementary question, Madam Speaker. Mr Connolly just suggested to this house that the reason for the downturn was the paediatrics problem. Mr Connolly, can you explain, then, why in paediatrics there has actually been an increase from 1,061 separations in the same quarter of last year to 1,128 separations in this last quarter - a quite substantial increase, which would tend to lay your explanation to rest, would it not?
MR CONNOLLY: Madam Speaker, we are looking here at three months of activity. If you projected this three months of activity over the whole year, we would be down a couple of points. If you look at any of our yearly activity levels you will find that you do not have four quarters that are identical; you have peaks and troughs. The figure for this quarter of this year is down by a couple of percentage points on the figure for the same quarter of last year, although I am told that last year - - -
Mr Humphries: That proves the point, does it not?
MR CONNOLLY: No; it proves very little. Last year's first quarter, I am told, was, in fact, unusually high; and last year's first quarter was not projected across the whole year.
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