Page 1784 - Week 06 - Thursday, 19 May 1994
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
I am pleased to advise Mrs Carnell that a member of the support team for that committee is the officer whose responsibility it is to develop the casemix strategy. I say that because casemix looks as though it is becoming the issue that the Opposition are raising as the magic wand. Mrs Carnell criticised me, saying, "Now that Connolly is in charge there will be a magic wand and Health will be fixed". I very clearly said that that is not the case; there is not a magic wand to fix Health. Casemix is a useful tool that most States are looking at very carefully. The Victorian Government has embraced it as the be-all and end-all. If you look at the debate in Victoria and if you look at the material that has been published in the Medical Journal of Australia - I saw the paper that the Australian Consumers Association have published on it only very recently - there is a real debate as to the effectiveness of the Victorian model.
Casemix, Madam Speaker, is a tool that is probably most effective in comparing hospital and hospital. In Victoria there are probably 30 or 40 public hospitals across the State, or perhaps even across the metropolitan area, ranging from the huge major hospitals, the mega hospitals like Royal Melbourne, through to some fairly small facilities. Casemix seems a very effective tool to try to compare product out of the various hospitals, but it still has use in a single or principal hospital and a minor public hospital context like we have. We are working on it. We expect it to be operational some time during the next financial year. At the moment it is not operational and alive; but we are using casemix as a management technique, and the casemix expert - our person who knows all about casemix - is providing some support to our resource management committee.
Arthur Andersen said that for 10 years or more we have had a problem with ACT Health being unable to control its budget. On page 17 of the report, going back three or four years, we had an overrun of some $13.99m in 1991, representing 5 per cent of the budget; an overrun of $11.9m in 1992-93; and a projected overrun for this year of $9.34m.
Mr Humphries: How much?
MR CONNOLLY: They are projecting $9.34m. I can play a political game and say, "The overrun that we have is only $9m compared to $13.9m or $14m when Mr Humphries was Minister; that our overrun is only 3.6 per cent compared to 5.6 per cent when Mr Humphries was Minister; that of our overrun only 1.8 per cent is outside business rules, whereas 3.6 per cent was outside business rules when Mr Humphries was Minister"; but, Madam Speaker, that would be fairly trite and fairly pointless. The point I was trying to make when I said that we have a community problem is not to blame the community; but, as an ACT community, as ratepayers, as citizens as well as politicians - sorry, Mr Stevenson; no personal offence intended - we all have a problem in that we are devoting a very high level of resources to Health and we are not getting as much efficiency out of that system as we should. What Arthur Andersens documented here is a culture that seems to think that the bottom line does not matter; that we are doing good works and somebody will pay for it. That has been a problem.
Mr Kaine: Which was exactly the problem when Mr Humphries was the Minister. I am glad that you said that.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .