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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 9 Hansard (2 September) . . Page.. 2860 ..

Mr Moore (continuing):

Cost effective strategies have been identified to alter the staffing profile and maintain quality of nursing services. The specific suggestion of raising the enrolled nurse component has not been taken up due to the intake of first year nurses.

A system has been introduced at The Canberra Hospital to monitor daily replacement of sick leave and to monitor staff who are developing unacceptable patterns of sick leave.

Sick leave and annual relief allocation methodologies have been reviewed and the situation is improving.

Progress is being made on forecasting fluctuations in bed demand, operating and diagnostic service usage. Progress is also being made on improving the efficiency of staffing allocation to clinical units.

TCH has continued to work towards reducing compensation costs.

The clinical service suggestions in the report have been reviewed.

TCH and Calvary have developed partnerships with appropriate interstate hospitals to undertake cost benchmarking reviews. In addition, TCH is part of the South East Australasian Hospital Benchmarking Consortium.

(b) Renfrey Report

This Report analysed the health expenditure within the portfolio and highlighted differences between the ACT and other jurisdictions. Further analysis was undertaken by applying the NSW Resource Distribution Formula to further identify areas of over and under funding across the portfolio.

(1) The total cost of the consultancy was $72,857

(ii) The Department of Health and Community Care engaged the services of David Renfrey and Associates in April 1998 to undertake an analysis of ACT Health and Community Care expenditure.

The first stage of the project was to consolidate and provide an analysis of expenditure in the portfolio to highlight expenditure patterns and differences relative to the other States and the Northern Territory. The second component of the first stage was to develop a theoretical model based on the NSW Resource Distribution Formula to determine the likely outcome of such an approach if applied to the ACT.

The second stage of the project involved undertaking a more detailed comparative benchmarking and analysis in order to identify specific service areas which fall outside established cost parameters.

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