Page 1964 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 15 June 1994
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QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
Cardio-Thoracic Unit
MRS CARNELL: Madam Speaker, my question is addressed to Mr Connolly as Minister for Health. Minister, is it not true that a recent consultant's report of an inquiry carried out on behalf of your Government into the need for a cardio-thoracic unit in Canberra shows that a unit is clinically viable and could start up in 1995 with 300 patients per year, increasing to 500 patients? Taking into account the $14m increase in the health budget announced yesterday, why have you again ignored the demonstrated clinical and social need for a cardio-thoracic unit in Canberra?
MR CONNOLLY: Madam Speaker, the Liberals are desperate for an angle to attack the budget. They were scratching around furiously last night and this morning saying, "You are spending too much on health. The Commonwealth Government says that you spend $45m too much on health". Presumably, the Liberals would spend less, because, after all, in the Canberra Weekly you have said of health and education, "We have to take a big relook at whether the Government should be providing those services at all". You either are ignoring, which is somewhat discreditable, or are simply ignorant of, which is excusable, the fact that the raw figure of $45m overspending ignores the offset of $26m of cross-border transfer. You have been health spokesman for three years. Presumably you know that, so why do you talk about a $45m overspend? Madam Speaker, again the Liberals, desperate for an attack - having criticised us for spending too much on health, it seems - are now saying, "Why do you not spend a bit more?".
Madam Speaker, what we have said about the cardio-thoracic unit is that we have received a report which says that a cardio-thoracic unit in Canberra could be viable. On the costing options, we received varying pieces of advice which run from the rosy view that it may be cost neutral. The experience of health costings over recent years would lead one to look askance at that. The more general range is between $1m and $4m. It is viable, Madam Speaker, only if all the patients from the ACT and surrounding regions take part in the service. While cardio-thoracic surgery is no longer the leading edge change technology that it was perhaps 15 or 20 years ago, it is absolutely essential that the surgeons and the theatre staff be doing it all the time. You cannot do a couple of cardio-thoracic operations this week, do other surgery next week and do a couple of cardio-thoracic operations the following week. You need a throughput of between 300 and 500 a year.
Certainly, while we are consolidating and enhancing the health system, while the Liberal Party and their various friends are running around this town talking about Third World medicine and running down the state of the Woden Valley Hospital and while you are making these silly little cheap political attacks, it is a little optimistic to assume that everybody, including those privately insured, who now go to St Vincent's Private Hospital - a large bulk of public patients from the ACT also go to St Vincent's Private Hospital - will immediately come to the ACT, particularly when some of the world's great centres for heart surgery are only four hours away and particularly when you people are engaged in your cheap political attacks on the cardio-thoracic unit.
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