Page 3954 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 29 November 2022
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wages. The Chief Minister made a decision to keep the ACT’s investment in health below what was needed to keep up with rising health prices and wages. We see the result of that neglect and lack of investment almost every day in stories of our health system at breaking point, unable to meet demand and in crisis.
Responding to my question about underfunding of our health system in question time last month, the Chief Minister said, “The ACT government’s funding that comes from our own source revenue and our contribution to total health funding has not been cut, only the commonwealth contribution has been cut.” As Mr Barr well knows, the Labor-Greens government has increased health funding but it has not been enough to cover increases in wages and the rising cost of health services. It just has not met that increase. For years, this government has underfunded and neglected our health system and Canberrans deserve to know that this government has underfunded their system and to know that this is the cause of the problems that plague our health system.
Public hospitals are the backbone of any public health system. If you want to know how well or not Canberra’s health system is faring, a good place to start is the performance of the Canberra Hospital. Since 2017-2018 our emergency department has had the worst wait times in the country. Furthermore, since 2017-18 less than half of patients have been triaged within clinically appropriate timeframes. Over these years, the ACT has been on average almost 12 per cent behind all other states and territories, which is simply a disgrace. The health minister’s latest quarterly report revealed that only 39.7 per cent of patients received treatment within clinically recommended wait times. Almost 9 per cent of patients did not wait to be seen after being admitted to ED. That means almost 3,300 patients left emergency without being treated in the April-June quarter.
Put simply, our hospital system cannot cope with demand and the reason our hospital system is unable to cope is because of this government’s years of neglect and constant underfunding of health in the Territory. Our analysis back to 2012 proves it. How can our hospital staff meet clinically recommended wait times when the government fails to adequately invest in our health care with proper resources and staffing?
One of the stakeholders I met with said that the primary reason for long emergency wait times is bed-lock. Now, back in 2011 when Katy Gallagher was the Chief Minister, she released the 2011 Capital asset plan. Now, this outlined the demand projections for the next ten years. In 2015 and 2016 the Barr-Rattenbury government were not providing beds according to that plan. They threw it away.
According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, by 2021-22 ACT was short 150 beds compared to this plan. So they knew this back in 2011. When our emergency and elective surgery wait times are as bad as they are, this bed shortage is clearly not acceptable. Patients have contacted me who are waiting more than two years to receive operations for illnesses causing them significant pain, and this reduces the quality of their life. Only 50 per cent of category 2 patients are being admitted within clinically recommended timeframes. Only 50 per cent. The Labor-Greens government’s failure to make these beds available has blown out waiting times, wait lists and forced Canberrans to live in pain or seek treatment in Sydney or the private system.
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