Page 639 - Week 02 - Thursday, 20 February 2020
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service provided for Canberrans at the walk-in medical centres, and particularly for Kirsten’s good work at Belconnen.
Kirsten is certainly a much-loved member of the walk-in-centre community and has provided excellent care for Canberrans.
I cannot let Mrs Dunne’s comments in relation to the emergency departments go unanswered. I have talked a lot about them in question time over the last little while, but I want to read some feedback that we received from another constituent, who wrote a long letter thanking Canberra Hospital for the treatment that he received. Part of it says:
Quite honestly, I was expecting an unpleasant experience and long wait times in emergency when I arrived there about 5 pm on the day of arrival. It was quite the opposite. I think I might have had to wait an hour at most before going into emergency to see a doctor. He and his medical student were really lovely in their approach to me and talked me through everything.
This patient went on to be admitted to the hospital and taken to a ward.
A couple of things come out of that, Madam Assistant Speaker. First, the benchmark time for category 3 patients is 30 minutes. It is important that we work towards meeting those benchmark treatment times, but it is also the expectation of Canberrans that they will be seen a timely way that reflects the urgency of their treatment. For this person, waiting an hour was pretty much what he expected. He had expected that he might have even had to wait longer. That was seen to be a perfectly reasonable amount of time to wait, given the urgency of his situation and given the treatment that he then subsequently received.
While the opposition wants to make a very big deal of these numbers, and while we do need to see them improved, we also need to understand that we are talking about a service that provides emergency treatment to Canberrans at a range of urgency need levels. The vast majority of Canberrans understand that, when they turn up at emergency, people who need the most urgent treatment are going to get treated most urgently. The vast majority of feedback that we receive is positive feedback about our emergency departments and our nurse-led walk-in-centres, which are an absolutely fantastic contribution to the ACT’s health system.
In 2018-19 there were more than 61,000 presentations across the three existing centres, even noting that Gungahlin only opened in September 2018. I have no doubt that we will continue to see that number grow and we will continue to see the positive feedback from Canberrans for this fantastic service.
MS CODY (Murrumbidgee) (3.42): I thank and acknowledge Ms Cheyne for bringing this very important matter to the chamber today. Whilst all members of the Legislative Assembly have a tendency to be competitive in every way they can, I think I am currently winning the competition for being the most likely to need medical attention—not in a catastrophic or chronic disease kind of way, but more in a sudden allergic reaction, accident-prone kind of way. And I have to say the walk-in centres are terrific for people like me.
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