Page 4337 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 27 November 2013
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Calvary is now recording results of 75 per cent to 81 per cent. What that actually means is that almost twice the number of category 2 patients access elective surgery within the clinically recommended time frame. So there is a tick for that. One would assume that you would actually get a tick for that. At the same time, the number of long-wait patients on Calvary’s elective surgery waiting list has dropped by 20 per cent, with just 169 long-wait patients on their list at the end of October 2013.
Across both hospitals, this has resulted in a 33 per cent reduction in just seven months of the numbers of people waiting too long for their surgery. It is now the lowest on record, with 618 patients waiting extended time for their surgery. When this process began in March, there were 922 long-wait patients. In addition to this, we have already appointed a director of territory-wide surgical services, Dr Andrew Mitchell, to further improve how our surgical services are delivered across the ACT public health system.
The role of the director is to establish a territory-wide surgical services framework for the ACT. This will require changes to what both hospitals do. I expect that there will be more concerns raised from doctors as those changes are implemented. But this is all about making sure we have got the most efficient and effectively run elective surgery program in the territory, which means we have to make sure that our hospitals undergo some role delineation about who does what and where it is done.
In relation to the concerns raised by the VMOA—I think this is the only health association in my time as health minister that has called for my sacking—
Mr Hanson: Hear, hear!
MS GALLAGHER: You had your shot at that, Mr Hanson, during the election. The VMO association—so let us just see this in that context—have then come out without any of the information that I have just provided to the Assembly. They have accused Health of manipulating surgical waiting lists. I have spoken to more than two doctors who are also members of the VMOA who have rejected that entirely. They have sent me messages to say that the VMOA does not speak for them on this, that these matters had been discussed at length at the surgical services task force with individual surgeons and with the staff in theatres so that everybody understood what was being achieved and why changes were being put in place.
In relation to our targets, they are linked to funding. The results that we achieved in 2012 mean that the ACT will be eligible for the full reward funding of $680,000. But it is also important to note that over the last full financial year 2012-13, 11,579 elective surgery procedures were performed, which is the highest number performed on record. This was almost 600 above the target and the third consecutive year that we have provided over 11,000 elective surgery procedures.
I would have some sympathy for what the VMOA were saying if we were reducing elective surgery overall, if we had implemented the cuts to a budget that resulted in less elective surgery being done. But is it not interesting that the more we ramp up elective surgery, the more additions we get on the elective surgery waiting list? It is just an insatiable area of health care. We could do an extra 2,000 next year and I can
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