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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 14 Hansard (11 December) . . Page.. 4279 ..

At 5.00 pm, in accordance with standing order 34, the debate was interrupted. The motion for the adjournment of the Assembly having been put and negatived, the debate was resumed.

MR STANHOPE: Mr Smyth also says that he would like to change the average waiting times in the emergency units at both hospitals to reduce them by 10 per cent. (Extension of time granted.) That is a particularly interesting target in itself. We measure ourselves against the Australian triage standard in relation to emergency services and we are proud of the fact that 100 per cent of our category 1 patients are treated immediately. It is a bit hard to make a 10 per cent improvement on that. Eighty-four per cent of our category 2 patients are seen within 10 minutes. The Australian standard is 80 per cent. Mr Smyth wants us to go to 94 per cent.

Mr Smyth: Why not?

MR STANHOPE: Because of the cost, Mr Smyth. You can't move without it costing. You can't make an improvement of that sort without employing another dozen nurses. Another dozen nurses would cost you another half a million dollars. You can't keep doing it. Where is the money going to come from, Mr Smyth?

Mr Smyth: Read your policy.

MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please! I do not want an argument across the chamber.

MR STANHOPE: We are already performing better than the Australian average and you want to get us 10 per cent above it, without saying how many more nurses you are going to employ and how many more doctors you are going to employ to deal with those additional people coming in. Why do you seek to establish a system where everybody abandons GPs and other alternative forms of health care and goes to accident and emergency? Don't you want doctors to be involved in primary health care? Do you want everybody to go to the hospital? Do you want 100 per cent all the time?

Mr Smyth: You know that that's not true. You misrepresent, as you always do.

MR STANHOPE: That is what you want. It is the same story with category 3 patients. The target is to see 75 per cent of these patients within 30 minutes and we do better than that. We meet all the targets in accident and emergency. We have the best responding hospital in Australia.

Mr Smyth proposes, and we dwelt on this before, to improve health care through better use of IT. He wants to introduce a secure, confidential electronic health record for patients by June 2004. The establishment of an electronic health record is something that has been considered for some time. It is patently true that such a system would promote a seamless transfer of health information and improve patient care. We do not doubt that for a second. We would love to have such a system and we are committed to working towards having it. We would love it.

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