Page 2638 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 7 August 2013
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A key rationale for establishing the ACT walk-in centre was to reduce pressure on the ED, despite the English evidence of no impact … There was no evidence from the national evaluation of the NHS walk-in centres that co-located walk-in centres had ‘any effect on attendance rates, process, costs or outcome care’ of the EDs.
The evidence that ACT Health went specifically to find said that it would have no effect. The ACT health department said that it is actually going to make it worse, but the minister at the very same time was making public statements saying the opposite—contradicting the evidence, contradicting her own department’s assessment and advice.
What the evidence from the National Health Service also said was that the walk-in centres that were co-located in hospitals were not nurse led, that doctors and nurses moved between the centres and the ED in accordance with demand and, in fact, that about 40 per cent of patients in the co-located walk-in centres were seen by a doctor. So the nub of that then comes to the point that the academics found that the location of the ACT walk-in centre actually resulted in a net increase in ED activity.
Had the evidence from the National Health Service been heeded, the ACT walk-in centre would actually have been located somewhere else or would have had doctors in it. But certainly what should not have happened is that we should not have had the minister out there telling the community something that was entirely different to the evidence that was being provided to her and her department.
There is a pretty tragic effect of this, Mr Assistant Speaker. It is that we have seen the results decline. We have seen the results decline so that our jurisdiction, when it comes to ED waiting times, is performing the worst in the nation. It has been a steady decline when we have seen other jurisdictions improve. The latest National Health Performance Authority results released on 25 July show that 53 per cent of patients were seen within the recommended time frame. That is actually against a target of 65 per cent that we were meant to meet. Eventually that is going to grow to about 90 per cent of patients that are meant to be seen within four hours.
The quarterly performance report July to March 2013 shows only 51 per cent of presentations to the ED were seen within the prescribed times. For the sort of categories that need to be addressed in this with some degree of urgency, only 46 per cent of cat 4 patients were seen on time—that is semi-urgent patients—and only 42 per cent of urgent patients were seen on time.
There are some statistics for you, Mr Assistant Speaker. But I think it is very important to remember that this means there are elderly people, there are families, there are people in pain, people with chronic conditions, people that need treatment who are not seen on time. In some cases—semi-urgent—46 per cent are seen on time and only 42 per cent of urgent patients are seen on time.
We know that a contributing factor to that was the walk-in centre. The minister was warned. I think it is one thing that the minister was warned and decided to make a different decision. Look, I do not say that ministers cannot make decisions contrary to
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