Page 1041 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 16 March 2005
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and outpatient occasions of service? It is an absurd claim, but it shows how Mr Smyth will read into the figures what he wants to read into them so that he can make the political point.
Mr Smyth also makes argument around the average number of additions per month to the elective surgery waiting list being reduced since 2001. The number of people added to the elective surgery waiting list in 2001-02 was 10,205, an average of 850 people per month. In 2002-03, the total number added to the list was 9,849, an average of 820 per month. In 2003-04, the last full financial year, the total number of people added to the list was 10,911, an average of 910 people per month. The total number added to the list this financial year to the end of January was 6,091. This is the largest number added to the list for the same period in each of the previous three financial years. The total to January 2005 was about 60 more than the figure to January 2004, and the year-to-date figure for 31 January 2005 is more than 700 more than 2002-03.
Mr Smyth’s claim that there are fewer people, on average, being added to the list under this government than under the previous government is not supported, I believe, when you see those figures. Those are the figures and what is happening on the ground. Again Mr Smyth is proven wrong. Again Mr Smyth reads into the figures what he wants to read into them to make the political point. But he does not see what is actually happening on the ground and he is not interested in seeing it because it does not back up his argument.
So what I have been able to demonstrate so far this morning is this: we are ahead of target in delivering our inpatient occasions of service. We are ahead of target in delivering our outpatient occasions of service. And the number of people being added to the list has gone up. How can Mr Smyth claim, in those circumstances, that the system is costing more and we are getting less? It simply does not add up.
Mr Speaker, the amount of elective surgery at Calvary Hospital is down 13 per cent in 2003-04, according to Mr Smyth’s motion. First of all, activity is down 11 per cent, not 13 per cent, not 14 per cent. At the end of January 2004, just over 2,200 people had access to elective surgery at Calvary. To the end of January 2005, this figure was 2,024, that is, a drop of 255 people, or 11 per cent. The total number of people accessing elective surgery at Calvary to the end of January 2005 is, though, the second highest number on record. The highest number on record was in 2003-04, under the Labor government. The highest ever level of elective surgery at Calvary was under a Labor government.
The reason why the number is below the total for 2003-04 has been previously explained, and I will outline it again. In 2003-04, Calvary received an additional $2 million in recurrent funding from the budget in recognition of the need to improve access to surgery. Those dollars came in at a particular point in the year, and it meant that we saw an increase in the total number of surgeries happening for that particular period. Also, those figures were reported in the following financial year. So it flowed through. As I have indicated, the last two years have recorded the biggest numbers of people accessing elective surgery in the ACT’s history.
I would like to outline what we are doing for 2003-04. In 2003-04 Calvary provided almost 400 additional surgical cost-weights to compensate for underactivity in 2002-03. The additional activity was, by its nature, a one-off situation. This additional input
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