Page 172 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 14 February 2018
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specialists. My constituents alert me to the long waits in the emergency departments of our hospitals.
One constituent advised me that patients were being placed on trolleys in the Canberra Hospital when she was there in July last year. Another constituent told me about how she was assured that it was all right that there were patients in trolleys in the corridors because they had nursing staff especially dedicated to looking after the patients on trolleys in the corridors.
We have been told that the Canberra Hospital was on alert level 3 continuously for months last year, continuously through July, August and September. This involved essentially a threat to the disruption of the services of the Canberra Hospital. My constituents have raised concern about problems with the mental health system, which I will speak about later today. No doubt those opposite will sing hosannas to the praise of the health minister and the health system, but the people of Canberra are singing a different tune.
On Thursday last week we heard of one patient who referred to her time on the elective surgery waiting list as being akin to an episode of Fawlty Towers. She discovered that she had not been on a waiting list when she thought that she had been, and she had to wait for ages for a procedure for varicose veins. She went for a year thinking she was on the waiting list before she was actually added to the waiting list. It took two years after that for her to receive her operation. This woman told the ABC, “This is the nation’s capital. Surely we can do better than this.” That is a view that I have echoed more than once in the past. This is the nation’s capital. We are a First World nation. Surely we can do better than this.
Last Saturday the Canberra Times reported the horrendous story of a disability pensioner who was faced with the possibility of waiting five years to see a urologist before she could get on a waiting list to have a procedure. This woman is now facing the prospect of funding the operation herself from the minimal savings that she and her husband, both disability pensioners, are able to put together. These are people who still have children to look after, and they have to scrimp and save even more to pay for this procedure.
The problems in urology have been exacerbated by the loss of accreditation for urology training in 2014 due to concerns about the culture of the program in ACT Health. At the time, the hospital said the removal of accreditation would have no impact on clinical care. While accreditation has been restored, there has been an ongoing impact on clinical care for urology patients. They are just not getting it.
I now turn to some of the points in Ms Cheyne’s motion. Ms Cheyne refers to the investment of $1.6 billion. This is a reference to health expenditure. As the Productivity Commission report into government services 2018 recently showed, the ACT government has nearly tripled its expenditure in the nearly 10 years between 2006-07 and 2015-16. By contrast, other jurisdictions and the national average show a doubling in expenditure. But despite the tripling of our expenditure in hospitals, pretty much like tripling our rates, the people of the ACT are not getting a commensurate increase in services.
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