Page 5688 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 6 December 2011
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waiting times in the country. Minister, given that you have now been minister for six years, do you take responsibility for the ACT achieving the longest emergency department waiting times and the longest median elective surgery waiting times in the country?
MS GALLAGHER: I thank the Leader of the Opposition for the question. Yes, I do take responsibility for the wonderful public health system that we have here in the ACT, including the incredible performance that emergency department staff are putting in across both our public hospitals; and the committed staff in both the public and private systems are working to improve our elective surgery performance.
One thing that is interesting in the report that Mr Seselja quotes so gleefully from—because nothing gives the opposition more pleasure than the ACT scoring poor performances in national data sets; we notice how much excitement the opposition has—is that if you actually read the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report closely you will see that in relation to elective surgery there are very different ways that jurisdictions manage their waiting lists. For example, I think about 10 per cent of New South Wales category 3 patients get their surgery within five days. That is people that are classified in the category where you must have your surgery within 365 days. Ten per cent of them are getting it within five days, which would lead some to believe that perhaps they only go on the list when they have got a date for surgery and then they are removed from the list very quickly. What the AIHW report shows is that you cannot in elective surgery measure apples with apples. No other jurisdiction is actually reporting as we report, which is that people go on the list regardless of whether they have a date for surgery or not. Indeed, if they require two operations, they remain on the list.
In relation to emergency department figures, I would ask that the Leader of the Opposition go and have a look at the WA performance report for major metropolitan hospitals and what that shows. That actually shows that a busy metro hospital like the two that run in the ACT is delivering worse outcomes—40 per cent timeliness as opposed to the improvements that we are seeing in our emergency departments here. Again, when you measure like with like, you get a totally different story.
Wouldn’t it be nice if those opposite actually recognised the hard work that is being done in our public hospitals to continue to provide excellent service to the ACT community? Indeed, I was contacted by one of the emergency department specialists last week bemoaning how awful it is to constantly read in the paper that we have the worst emergency department in the country—
Members interjecting—
MR SPEAKER: Thank you, members.
MS GALLAGHER: And how much that impacts on staff morale. I think that we need to be starting to talk about all the good things that are happening in our hospitals and seriously acknowledge that AIHW’s reports do not measure apples with apples.
MR SPEAKER: A supplementary, Mr Seselja.
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