Page 553 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 19 March 2014
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
The second point, of course, was that the Chief Minister went out there and said that this was going to relieve pressure on the ED. She went out there and said that this walk-in centre was going to relieve pressure on the ED. In case you do not believe me, Madam Deputy Speaker—and I am sure that would not be the case—let me quote from the following 2009 press release from the Chief Minister:
The Rudd government … announced $10 million to establish a walk-in centre at the Canberra Hospital to help take pressure off its busy emergency department.
On 12 May this was stated:
Substantial work has gone into developing this innovative model of care which aims to reduce pressures on other services such as emergency departments.
In December 2011 she was still going. We were told that it was “particularly positive and is helping alleviate the pressures on our busy public hospital emergency department”. The Chief Minister probably thought think at that stage that it was relieving pressure on the emergency department because, as we know, the results were being fabricated. But what is the actual truth? Was this ever going to reduce pressure? We know it was not, and we know that because her own experts told her it would not. In 2009 the ACT Health emergency department strategic plan—this is the strategic plan done by her department to tell the department how they are going to fix the EDs—said about the walk-in centre that it “is not expected to provide an improvement in performance”, was “likely to create demand”, and “should not be regarded as a strategy that will contribute to ED performance”.
That is what the department said in 2009. But in 2010, the minister, as I have just read, was repeatedly saying, “This is going to take pressure off the ED,” and “This has taken pressure off the ED.” As we know, that was not true. There were reviews conducted that showed how appallingly this was implemented. I quote from a report released in 2013, a review of the nurse-led walk-in centre:
Despite seeking out the evidence, this seems to have been used selectively and cautiously, at times misinterpreted, and largely influenced by the views of powerful interest groups.
The report stated:
A key rationale for establishing the ACT walk-in centre was to reduce pressure on the ED, despite the English evidence of no impact …
So they went over to England to have a look at their system, and the evidence was, “No, it’s not going to help your ED.” But the Chief Minister was out there saying that it would. I will go further:
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.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video