Page 1632 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 9 May 2018
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On 24 March 2018 the minister for health and the Minister for Mental Health announced a proposed restructure of the Health Directorate into two organisations. We were advised that one organisation would be responsible for health policy and the other would be responsible for operational issues. The Minister for Health and Wellbeing has provided scant detail about this restructure and how it would work. Indeed we do not even know what these organisations will be called.
The Minister for Health and Wellbeing caught everybody by surprise with her announcement, which, of course, was done at 3 o’clock on a Friday afternoon. At the time Dr Stephen Robson of the AMA advised the Canberra Times:
When the governance is wonky it sends ripples through the entire organisation … There’s been a huge upheaval at ACT Health recently and there are a lot of balls in the air.
Their accreditation runs out in July, unless they meet that it would be a bit of a disaster.
Dr Robson added the following comments about the sudden departure of the director-general:
My concern at the moment is it’s not well understood … The nurses, doctors, everyone needs to understand who they are working for.
Certainly with director general leaving suddenly and unexpectedly it engenders concern with everyone.
I notice that the minister has circulated while I am speaking a page-and-a-half amendment, in classic style of her accountability.
There are two people responsible for the wonky governance of health in the ACT—the Minister for Health and Wellbeing and the Minister for Mental Health. In her ministerial statement in February 2018 Minister Fitzharris made no mention of a proposed restructure. The decision to restructure ACT Health appears to many to be a $1.6 billion thought bubble based on political, not clinical, evidence. This motion calls on the government to produce documents so that the community and interested groups can understand the real reason for the restructure.
I refer to recent claims reported in the Canberra Times of 26 April of attempts to mislead the Australian council on healthcare accreditation by over-rostering of staff and temporarily removing broken down equipment. I have no capacity to make claims about whether these claims are true or not. However, I note they are consistent with past problems in the Health Directorate, such as the 2012 data doctoring scandal. I refer to the problems with Ms Fitzharris providing inaccurate information to the Assembly about elective surgery and emergency department waiting times. I hope what we have seen with these allegations is not a deliberate attempt to provide false information to the accreditors.
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