Page 1535 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 8 May 2018
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system. These are listed here in Mrs Dunne’s motion. I am only going to speak to a couple of these items today because, quite frankly, 10 minutes is not enough to cover them all.
Firstly, we have the failure of the Canberra Hospital to pass a reasonable number of standards in the accreditation audit conducted by the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards in March this year. Failing to meet accreditation is not recommendations of an audit; it is a fail in an exam when you know you have to get 100 per cent to pass, and it means that the health of Canberrans is at risk.
The accreditation report is not—I repeat not—a failure of the skill and dedication of our nurses, doctors, midwives and other health staff at the hospital. These staff treat patients with care, compassion, respect and professionalism every day. The report is actually a vindication of their skill in providing care despite the systemic issues in our hospital. They are not being supported by clear and competent leadership. I, like many other Canberrans—in fact, I would say most Canberrans—have the highest regard for the skilled and compassionate staff in our hospital. But the AMA president has recently said that hospital staff were frustrated that good clinical care was hampered by poor governance and management issues. He said there was a sense that good patient care but bad systems were in place so the good work of clinicians would be overshadowed.
It is important to understand that the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards accreditation report found that it was the current hospital systems that are fragmented. They lack consistency and clear direction across the organisation for the staff and service delivery. The issue is not the staff, but the failure of the systems and tools the staff have at their disposal and the rules and processes that they have to follow. It is highly concerning that some of these failures put patients at extreme risk. This leads to the singular conclusion that there has been a failure of leadership and governance at the Canberra Hospital, and we must now fix this long list of issues by July in order to keep the national accreditation.
Ms Fitzharris has also said it is clear there are governance issues within ACT Health that need to be addressed. So where are those governance issues landing if not firmly at the feet of the minister for health? The minister for health has told us this morning that she has been the minister for a year. Actually, it is far longer than that. It is 18 months since the election, and she was an assistant minister for about a year before then. Mr Coe referred to the fact that often you will blame a previous government for issues. Ms Fitzharris seems to be blaming previous ministers, even though she was one of those herself at the time.
The second point in Mrs Dunne’s motion is the claims reported in the media that in preparation for the audit, situations were contrived temporarily to appear to comply with accreditation standards. How can we have faith in our system when it is reported that things are concocted or temporarily changed to make it look like they are one way and then reverted to the other way after the inspection or the audit has taken place? It is a bit like cheating in your exam when you are trying to get 100 per cent, but we still failed to pass.
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