Page 2770 - Week 09 - Thursday, 27 September 2007
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know that there are issues with the precedent attached to emergency patients, but I am also aware of the less spoken about issue, and that is the industrial relations environment which impacts on rosters. There seems to be no compelling case why the efficiencies that were detailed in evidence presented by the John James hospital could not have been applied equally to the Canberra Hospital. Indeed, as I recall, there were superior efficiencies even at Calvary, and that is something that warrants careful examination.
Relevant, too, is the committee’s recommendation that, to the extent that work has not already taken place, the Canberra Hospital routinely produce and analyse theatre performance information falling under the following headings: capacity utilisation ratios in terms of hours and sessions; average number of cases per hour; cancelled schedule lists; cancelled operations; utilisation of scheduled theatre hours; a review of list start and finishing times; numbers of patients operated on compared with planned numbers; incidence of out of hours operating; theatre incident rates and break-up of public, private and Department of Veterans’ Affairs patients.
Evidence given by the medical specialists gave cause for some concern in this regard. I am sure that the government have looked at that evidence, but I would encourage them to give weight to that issue in the context of their ongoing industrial relations management at the hospital, particularly with nursing staff.
Finally, I would also draw to the attention of the Assembly recommendation 13, wherein the commitee recommended that ACT Health consider the development of a not-ready-for-care policy to respond to people who delay surgery repeatedly without an adequate reason. This policy should stress to patients the consequences of failure to attend for scheduled surgery.
There seemed to be some resistance in this area, but the fact of the matter is that older folks sometimes, when presented with a date for scheduled surgery, put these things off, sometimes for reasons that we might think are not terribly important. I suspect sometimes people procrastinate because going in for surgery is not, to many people’s minds, their idea of an enjoyable experience. But what is clearly not made known to people is the full consequences of those delays, and when their situation deteriorates they may well find that they are struggling to get into the surgery that they clearly need.
Elective surgery is a misunderstood term. I have had people write to me and say, “Why do we worry about people who want to have elective surgery?” They think it is like cosmetic surgery, people having noses improved and things to make themselves look more attractive. The fact of the matter is that—
Mr Barr: Or if they are in the defence force.
MR MULCAHY: Yes. I think they are for psychological reasons, though, or so we are told. But the fact of the matter is that if you do not have private insurance and you have a deteriorating orthopaedic condition in particular, that may not be life-threatening and particularly taking into account the backlog and the lack of specialists in the ACT, what might be deemed elective surgery, by definition, does not
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