Page 337 - Week 01 - Thursday, 16 February 2012
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MR SPEAKER: I am prepared to give the minister some latitude to explore statistics but I hope the Chief Minister can answer the question as well.
MS GALLAGHER: I can, if the opposition will allow me to. What I was saying was that the measure of elective surgery performance overall has to be seen in the context of the waiting list, the number of operations being performed, the demand for elective surgery and the impact of New South Wales patients on our system. Indeed, over 11,000 operations this year will be performed.
Mr Hanson: On a point of order, she has talked about how many operations will be performed. She has talked about how many people are on the list. She says it has got to be put in the context of New South Wales but she has not explained why the median wait time has deteriorated so badly under this government. She has avoided the question, and I would ask you to get the minister to come to the point.
MR SPEAKER: Minister, you have the floor.
MS GALLAGHER: Thank you, Mr Speaker. In the nine seconds that I have been provided graciously by the opposition to answer the question, I am very pleased to report to members of the opposition that the median wait time is now at 59 days and coming down.
MR SPEAKER: Mr Smyth, a supplementary.
MR SMYTH: Given the ROGS report says that the median wait time is now 76 days, a deterioration from 40 days, minister, why have you failed, after nearly six years as health minister, to improve our performance on elective surgery?
MS GALLAGHER: As I said in answer to the previous question, we are doing more operations than were ever dreamed about by the opposition when they were in government and managing the health system—blowing up hospitals, removing 100 beds from the system. We are now in a position where we are delivering over 11,000 operations, where our long-wait patients have dropped considerably. The long-wait patients have dropped by 36 per cent. We have been very clear that as we have been doing our long-wait reduction program, the median wait time would increase, and that is exactly what we saw.
We could have taken the strategy where we ignored our long-wait patients on the list and removed patients on the list or did surgery on patients that were not on the list for a long time. And, yes, that would have improved our median wait time overnight. But it would not have dealt with the fact that there were less urgent people who needed access to surgery. So we took the view that we needed our long-wait reduction strategy. That is in place. That has meant that the median wait time has increased. And this is my argument about the median wait time. There is absolutely no incentive with the median wait time to remove patients with less urgent conditions—none at all. There are none, because if you move the less urgent people off the list, your median wait time blows out.
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