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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Tuesday, 22 June 2004) . . Page.. 2328 ..

I’m not saying, Mr Speaker, that everything’s been fixed. There are still too many people who have been waiting beyond standard timeframes for elective surgery. But the community can have confidence that the Stanhope government is working hard to address these issues. I repeat: no-one in need of urgent public elective surgery is made to wait too long for surgery, and we are now moving to improve the situation for those with less serious needs. And it’s not just a case of simply throwing money at the problem. In providing additional resources, we are targeting those specialities and those patients who have been waiting the longest, and we are starting to see results, Mr Speaker.

The number of long-wait patients is starting to fall in the ACT. Additional funds have been made available this year for extra joint replacement and cataract surgery at the Calvary Hospital. The people of the ACT can be confident, Mr Speaker, that we will continue to look for ways to further improve access to this important service.

I’d like now to turn to the issue of emergency departments. The increase in the number of long-wait emergency department admissions is of concern to the government. So too is the level of access block or bed block, as it’s called; that is, the time taken to get out of the ED into a bed in a ward. All people classified as triage category 1, that is, in need of resuscitation, receive attention immediately, contrary to what Mr Smyth claims. The increase in waiting times for other categories is due to the considerable increase in demand for more urgent ED attention over 2003-04.

But we still rate the best in Australia in meeting emergency department waiting times. The only national data currently available refers to the 2001-02 financial year. This shows the ACT as having the lowest ED waiting times in the nation. Without stealing anyone’s thunder, more up-to-date information that will be available shortly will reinforce this position.

The number of people arriving at our emergency departments and classified as category 2 patients has almost doubled over the 2003-4 financial year. However, I can say that preliminary information for May 2004 shows some definite improvement in category 2 waiting times—back to benchmark performance. Obviously we need to wait for final data and also get a few more months of data in before we can say the problem has been fixed, but there are very positive signs.

Yes, our hospitals do operate a load-sharing or bypass system when necessary and emergency departments are very, very busy places. But no-one with a life-threatening situation is ever kept waiting due to load-sharing conditions. And the hospitals are never moved to load sharing at the same time. It does not happen, Mr Smyth, contrary to your assertion. And no-one with a life-threatening situation is ever kept waiting due to load sharing, and they never will. Load sharing between the hospitals’ emergency departments is a normal and appropriate response for emergency departments when faced with peak workloads.

What would Mr Smyth rather, that people wait because there are no beds at Canberra but there are beds at Calvary? No, we send them to where there is capacity. Sometimes our emergency departments get more attendances than they can cope with. It makes sense, Mr Speaker, that in these times people are diverted to services where they can be more adequately cared for. Would Mr Smyth prefer that we have our ambulances circling our

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