Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 7 Hansard (24 June) . . Page.. 2338 ..

MRS DUNNE

The story told in the Estimates Committee report is a pretty sad one, really. I think that the most crucial thing that tells you just how parlous our health situation is becoming is a look at the mean waiting times. When the Liberal government was voted out of office in 2002, the mean waiting time for category 1 surgery was 14 days. It was half the clinically desirable time. It has now extended to 24 days.

As with all things, there are statistics and there are statistics, and the minister will be able to stand up and say that it is within the clinically approved time of 30 days and we are still under the clinically approved time. But in one year the waiting time for people in category 1 surgery has doubled. That is a scandal; it is an absolute scandal. The waiting time of people who are critically in need of urgent medical attention has doubled under the tutelage of Mr Stanhope and Mr Corbell. It has gone from 14 to 24 days, which is a complete and utter scandal, and they cannot rest behind the mantra that it is still within the clinically approved times.

That is a scandal, and it is a symptom of all that is happening in the hospital system in particular and the health system in general. The government talk about the work force and say that they have spent money that they said we would not spend. The money was in the budget but it was not spent because, for whatever reason, the work force at one of the hospitals would not negotiate. But we had already delivered wage rises at Calvary and we have seen delivered by this government substantial wage rises to nurses, which no-one begrudges, in the rest of the public hospital system, but we are not seeing anything for it. We see better paid nurses, and no-one begrudges that. At the same time, we are not seeing more throughput, we are not seeing more patients being seen, but we are seeing a blowout in the waiting times.

I am not going to talk about waiting lists because the minister keeps saying that they are not a valid measure and that we should look at the waiting times, so I am looking at the waiting times and what I see is a scandal. When we pursued that in estimates, one of the questions I asked was whether, with the new enterprise agreement, there was any discussion about adjusting the shifts, because the doctors will always say that they could perform more surgery, but at 4 o'clock at Canberra Hospital the nurses go home because there is no flexibility in the shift.

The answer was: "Not in this EBA, Mrs Dunne. In the future, we may do that."But at the moment, there is still no flexibility, there is no scope for staggering the start of shifts so the quantum of time available for surgery in the course of the day is longer. It is happening at Calvary, but there is not enough money in Calvary to keep the theatres open, which is another thing. But at Canberra Hospital, where most of the higher level intensive surgery happens, there is a very rigid rostering system that militates against having more surgery performed. As a result, we are seeing a blowout, an unconscionable blowout, in the waiting times.

That has been contributed to by the fact that in the last financial year the funding at Calvary Hospital was so measly that the hospital had to close down for 12 weeks. They closed their elective surgery lists for 12 weeks. One of the initiatives this year, which is a sort of initiative, is the provision of $2 million for increased throughput at Calvary Hospital for elective surgery, increasing by CPI in the outyears, but essentially $2 million extra for Calvary Hospital to have an impact on the waiting lists and the waiting times that have blown out unconscionably in the last year.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .