Page 2698 - Week 10 - Thursday, 15 October 1992
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It would appear that all the organisations will spend a large amount of time advising each other. For example, the Independent Complaints Unit will use its database to advise in policy-making. The Complaints Advisory Council will advise the Minister on the operation of the Independent Complaints Unit itself. Just as an aside, the Complaints Advisory Council will supposedly have six people on it; to quote the discussion paper, two health providers, two consumers, and two non-affiliated people. I am totally bemused as to what non-affiliated people there are who are not consumers or providers. Still, I am sure that we will find out.
The Advisory Council, in turn, will receive advice from a panel of interstate experts. Apparently the ACT is too small to provide such experts. Complaints officers at Woden Valley Hospital and other health facilities will report back to the Independent Complaints Unit and, of course, to the Information and Complaints Unit itself. Complaints officers will also report back to the Board of Health's Health Care and Complaints Subcommittee. The Health Care and Complaints Subcommittee will continue to assess trends in complaints and will advise the Board of Health. The Board of Health will continue to advise the Minister on trends in complaints, as will, of course, the Complaints Advisory Council.
Presumably, the Health Care and Complaints Subcommittee will also liaise with the Independent Complaints Unit, with the Complaints Advisory Committee, and with ACT Health's own Information and Complaints Unit which, to quote the discussion paper, "will be maintained and enhanced". Somewhere in this mess fit the Ombudsman and the complaints officers established at private health facilities. Through the thick of this, the responsibility of the registration boards seems very unclear. In other words, I think you will all agree, the picture is somewhat confused.
The discussion paper says that the ACT model needs to avoid the ambiguous relationships contained in the Victorian legislation. It would appear that what is being advanced is still as clear as mud. A lot of work remains to be done. I sincerely hope that this paper is truly a discussion paper open to comment. Mr Berry's other so-called consultations have merely been him telling others what he is going to do, heedless of what the community may feel. Occupational health and safety has been a very good example of this.
At the present time we should be getting back to basics in our health system, at the same time as managing the Grants Commission induced cutbacks to our health system. This is not helped by loading onto the ACT structures which are appropriate to larger States but not necessarily to our smaller health system. The Victorian Health Complaints Unit upon which the ACT model is gauged has an annual budget of $800,000, only four times larger than the unit proposed for Canberra. Yet Victoria has about 150 public hospitals to manage, a substantial number of private hospitals, and a recurrent health budget some 14 times the size of the ACT's. Victoria obviously has the economies of scale to support many structures and procedures which it would not be efficient to provide in the ACT. We need to think differently about how we do things in the ACT. We should not merely mirror what is going on in larger States. This is why the ACT has such a problem with overexpenditure in Health and is one of the reasons why there will be such pain in meeting Commonwealth reductions.
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