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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Tuesday, 29 June 2004) . . Page.. 2947 ..

that, as our population ages, those people have the opportunity to be involved in programs that will at least maintain a good level of physical fitness that would in turn lead to less of a need for great increases in health spending.

MR CORNWELL (8.59): The amount that has been allocated for health, $534 million, is a great deal of money. It is a pity that some of it at least is going to be wasted because of the problems of bed block in the ACT hospital system. That was shown very clearly in information provided for me in response to questions on notice. I have mentioned before but believe that it is necessary to mention again that we have a situation where a considerable number of nursing home patients are at the moment, or have been, in hospital beds when they should be, or should have been, somewhere else.

In August of last year there were 23 patients in that category. There were 21 in September, 13 in October, 27 in November, 11 in December, nine in January, seven in February, 23 in March and 21 in April. That was only for Canberra Hospital. Calvary had 10 in August, nine in September, five in October, six in November, seven in December, seven in January, three in February, six in March, and six in April. The average for Canberra Hospital was 17.2 and the average for Calvary was seven.

These figures, however, have to be put into perspective. It costs $365 a day to keep a nursing home patient in a hospital bed. The figures, as far as I can work them out, indicate that it cost something like $2.9 million for Canberra Hospital over those nine months and $1.4 million for Calvary Hospital for 11 months. That is an unforgivable situation. The fact that it has been going on for 2½ years, since this government came to power, is an indictment of the whole system. The worst feature of it, of course, is that it is such a terrible waste of money. These people should be being accommodated at a much lower cost in proper facilities, but are not.

The government has been equally slack in the provision of a subacute/non-acute care facility of 60 beds for aged people, a facility which is still not on line. I understand that it is going to be provided at the Calvary Hospital campus. However, none of the $5.15 million budgeted for the project has been expended to date. We are told that construction is expected to be completed late in 2005, next year, and the facility is expected to be operational early in 2006.

Mr Speaker, that is simply not an acceptable result after the 2½ years—in fact, three years—of this Labor government’s occupation of the treasury bench in this territory. Of the 60 beds, 40 will be allocated for rehabilitation transitional care and the other 20 beds will be for acute psycho-geriatric care. These are all necessary facilities for the ACT; they are all in great demand. I think that it is an appalling indictment of the government that nothing has been done. I repeat that money is being wasted that could properly be used for the provision of care for patients who deserve and need to be in ACT hospitals, rather than nursing home patients who are occupying beds in those facilities.

MS TUCKER (9.04): I raised some comments about the health budget in the initial response, so I will not repeat them. I just wanted to add a little more on the question of measures: changing measures and quality of measures. It is frustrating to have changing measures. It is difficult to keep track of changes over time if the measures keep changing. Again, I have to point out problems with the quality of measures. I am looking for a link between quality of outcomes—the people, the environment or whatever is

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