Page 2348 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 23 June 2010
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changes which I think are unnecessary, I can certainly live with them. The impact of getting the Auditor-General to look at this can only be a good thing for the patients on those waiting lists. The effects that I was trying to achieve will be achieved by sending it to the Auditor-General.
I will just turn to another point—and it is one raised by Mr Hargreaves—which is to do with the suggestion that there has been some illegality by ACT Health staff. I make it very clear for the Hansard that that is not what I believe and it is not what I am alleging. It is not about individual Health staff cheating the data. The question goes to why patients are being downgraded. Are they being downgraded for the purpose of clinical reassessment by a doctor who has decided that a patient’s condition has improved and therefore they no longer require their surgery within 30 days, or is it because the surgery could not be completed within the 30 days and, therefore, ACT Health has said, “Well, we cannot do it within the 30 days. It’s going to go beyond the 30 days. Therefore, let’s re-categorise that patient”? That is a very different question.
Ms Gallagher in her speech talked about health policy, which I regularly review—I go on the website and look at it—and she talked about letters. She was waving a letter around, which I imagine is probably the same one that I had. I will grant leave to the minister to discuss this further if she would like to do so. She can confirm to me whether this is authentic. I have been provided with this letter. She may wish to confirm whether it is authentic. It is a letter to a doctor from surgical bookings at Canberra Hospital. It is from the manager of surgical bookings in the pre-admission clinic. I will read from the letter, and I am happy to table a copy:
Following are the front sheets of RFA’s for your Category 1—
an RFA is a request for admission—
patients that are currently unable to be accommodated in your contracted operating time.
This is about patients that cannot be done within the prescribed time—
According to the ACT Health Waiting Time and Elective Patient Management Policy, this category is for patients requiring an admission within 30 days ‘…for a condition that has the potential to deteriorate quickly to the point that it may become an emergency’ and that ‘Doctors who add a category 1 patient to the waiting list must ensure they are available to perform surgery within the 30 day period. Alternatively, the surgeon should make arrangements for another surgeon to perform the surgery within the appropriate time frame.
We know, quite clearly, Mr Speaker, that that is quite impossible in this scenario because in certain categories, in particular neurology, there simply are not the surgeons to conduct that surgery. It is like saying, “Category 1—you either do it or you give it to someone else,” when you know that the surgeons are fully booked and there is nobody else. The letter continues:
Please respond by informing us which of the following options you will be using to help us manage each of these patients:
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