Page 1884 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 7 June 2006
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functioning hospital. We have to make sure that we get the numbers right and then we have to make sure that we deliver.
From looking at the Institute of Health and Welfare report, there is no doubt that the ACT is funding its public health system at a rate significantly above the national average. That is clearly acknowledged by the Chief Minister. But what we are not getting for that money is the service. In five years of Labor it has got worse. The institute released its latest report assessing the performance of Australia’s public hospital system at the end of May, I am not able to deal with all the matters raised by the report, but I will draw out some of the important findings of the Institute. It is worth noting that this is the twelfth such report that the institute has done. So, when they make statements, they are based on longitudinal data. I think we can have good confidence in the quality of the analysis and in its findings. I remind the Assembly that this is the report for the year ended 30 June 2005 but, as I pointed out in the earlier debate, some of the numbers have got worse since we got this data.
There is one high point in the report. It is that nearly 10 per cent of all separations, or more than 650,000 separations across the country, were of potentially preventable hospitalisations. About a third of the patients going to the hospital could have been prevented going there, chronic sufferers of things such as asthma, diabetes and heart conditions. The national rate is 31.5 per cent per 1,000. The ACT rate, the lowest in the country, is 19.3 per cent per 1,000. Well done, minister. The highest was the Northern Territory at 45 per cent per 1,000. But that was the only good news. I wonder whether that is a reflection of our younger, healthier population rather than the effect of good health policy from this government.
Let’s take people waiting for elective surgery, one of the most important health indicators. In 2004-05 in the ACT one person in 10 waited for longer than 12 months for elective surgery in our public hospitals, waited longer than one year. That is simply not acceptable. It is the worst outcome of any jurisdiction in Australia. This sort of data is collected. Someone said in the previous debate that this sort of data is not collected, but it is. The outcome was simply the worst for any jurisdiction in Australia. The Australian average was that one in 20 waited longer than one year. The next worst state was Tasmania, and you have to remember the age profile for that state.
So, within specific categories of surgery, there have been some disturbing outcomes for the ACT. Around one person in six waited for more than 12 months for ear, nose and throat surgery. If you have a small child, you now how important ENT is. Almost one person in 10 waited more than 12 months for neurosurgery. How can you wait for more than 12 months for neurosurgery? Almost one in three waited for more than 12 months for ophthalmic surgery and around one in eight waited for more than 12 months for orthopaedic surgery.
Moreover, the median waiting time for patients admitted from the waiting list ranged from 22 days in Queensland—you may think about the doctor in Bundaberg and the closure of the Nambour hospital, but Queensland has got it, with 22 days being the median waiting time—to 45 days, double, in the ACT and that compares very poorly with the median waiting time for Australia of 29 days. It just shows that the ACT performed very poorly against this indicator. the evidence is there for all to see. I refer to tables 6.2, 6.4 and 6.5, among others, in the report.
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