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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 1990 ..
MR SPEAKER: Before I call questions without notice, I would like to welcome and acknowledge the presence in the chamber of some 36 graduate administrative assistants. Welcome to your Assembly
MR STANHOPE: Mr Speaker, my question is to the Minister for Health and Community Care. On 31 May, in Estimates Committee hearings, senior managers at Canberra Hospital confirmed that the hospital does collect statistics on morbidity and mortality across each of the specialities as a measure of the quality of work undertaken. I asked to be provided with that information and the minister said, amongst other things:
We will take it on notice and provide you with the level that we can ... We will bring it to as high a level of detail as we can.
Subsequently the minister did provide me with hospital-wide morbidity statistics and information on mortality rates. He claimed information relating to individual specialities was privileged and could not be released. Mr Speaker, my question is: can the minister explain why it is not possible to provide me with this data, data that is already collected in a form that does not identify particular doctors or patients? Does the minister not agree that morbidity and mortality statistics are an invaluable measure of how the hospital is performing?
MR MOORE: I made a reply at the Estimates Committee and I did deliver on that reply. As to the second part of the question, I will look again to see whether we can get even more detailed information. The advice I have is that the committees are particularly careful always to protect that style of privilege. There is a reason for it. You may remember the debate we had in the Assembly when we provided that privilege to private hospitals as well as the public hospitals. The attitude we have is that we want doctors to be able to talk freely to each other, to their peers, and say, "No, you were wrong; this person has had an adverse incident for these reasons," without any fear of information being misused. I will look at the information and see whether we can provide more detailed information than that which I provided to you.
MR STANHOPE: I ask a supplementary question. I thank the minister for his undertaking to give the issue further consideration. Does the minister not agree, nevertheless, that the public release of morbidity and mortality information is in the public interest? Would he not agree that the release of performance data would help re-establish public confidence in the health system, which has been so seriously damaged in recent time by his poor management?
MR MOORE
: Public confidence in the hospital has not been seriously damaged by my mismanagement. It has been seriously damaged by false allegations by a particular
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