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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 3 Hansard (28 March) . . Page.. 781 ..

MRS CARNELL: It has everything to do with it because they are cost savings. They are also about better outcomes for patients. Yes, we save money with fewer interventions, but I think they are exactly the sorts of things we should have had as part of the negotiations on the contracts. Also, there have been increases in procedures performed in rooms rather than in operating theatres. That has happened as well. There has been more efficient use of theatres.

We have already spoken about the fact that we have seen, I think, 1,400 extra patients this year. We believe that it will be 2,000 by the end of the year. Last year the previous Government spent an extra $14m on their health budget and did not see one extra patient. I am proud that we are going to see an extra 2,000 patients. I am proud that the waiting lists are coming down. I do not perceive that to be something that we should be ashamed of. I have spoken already about the more efficient use of prosthetics in orthopaedics. That is producing very real savings. There are now joint emergency rosters for Woden Valley and Calvary. That is happening. These are things that will produce a much better approach and will produce savings; but the Auditor-General has not taken them on board because, as he says, at this stage of the contract it is very hard to put dollar figures on them, as you would expect. In our projections there was $200,000 put aside - I think it was $200,000 of the $2.6m - which was productivity based. The Auditor-General has ignored those things.

I think the other thing that the Auditor-General has not taken on board is the increase in patients. The Auditor-General has compared previous VMO payments with this year's, not taking on board necessarily that, as at December, we had seen 1,000 extra patients. Obviously, if VMOs see more patients, they are going to be paid more money, because they are on a fee-for-service basis. Unfortunately, that was not taken on board. What I am saying is that there are very good plans in place to achieve the savings that we have suggested. I am disappointed that we have not achieved them in this year. Part of the reason for that, as I said earlier, was a $1.8m bill from previous years. It is interesting that, if you take that off the amount of money we have spent this year, the overrun does not look all that bad as well.

I believe that to recklessly mislead this house you have to do so knowing that what you say is not true, or have every reason to believe that what you are saying is not true. There is absolutely no way that I could have known from the information that was presented to me by the department that the savings may not have been able to be produced in this particular year. Some of those savings will be produced this year. They will be produced in future years. I do not think that at any stage I said that the money would be produced in the first year. In fact, newspaper reports indicated that I suggested $2.6m over three years, but I think that might have been the Canberra Times getting it wrong again. The reality is that we have not achieved the $2m savings that I would like to have achieved this year; but the information that we used, and, for that matter, the information that the Auditor-General has used, is not the whole story. I do not believe that anybody can be regarded as recklessly misleading this place as a result of using information presented by the department in good faith and as a result of an Auditor-General's report that is extraordinarily narrow and says quite categorically that it has not taken on board two of the major areas of savings.

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