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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Tuesday, 24 August 2004) . . Page.. 4028 ..

lounge—a comfortable place to stay for the day—to get their final pathology, their final consultation with their specialist, and so on, thus allowing them to move from their beds and, importantly, allowing those beds to be available for new persons coming into the hospital.

My discussions with clinicians at the Canberra Hospital have indicated that it is clear that getting people discharged in the morning rather than waiting till late in the day will make a significant difference. The figures we are looking at to address the access block problem in the emergency department involve, I am advised by the clinicians themselves, a net gain of approximately five to 10 in the number of beds available during the day. So the range of strategies we are outlining is designed to free up those beds. The government is not interested in counting mattresses. The issue is beds available when the doctors need them. That was the point that both Dr Richardson and Dr Singer made in the media conference I held with them earlier today.

The key issues the government is also exploring include making sure, where they do not occur already, that specialist rounds are completed in the morning rather than later in the day. Again, these measures will make sure people can be discharged earlier rather than having to be discharged later in the day. In addition to that, there is a range of other measures, such as the establishment of nurse practitioner positions in the emergency department. That will build quite strongly on the other steps the government has already taken. For example, we have now completed the construction of a new emergency medicine unit at the emergency department. Again, that will deal with certain categories of patients who, perhaps, do not need to be admitted but can be observed for a longer period within the ED prior to going home.

Last night I was very pleased to spend some time in the emergency department. I had an opportunity to speak with the senior clinician on duty, along with both the director and the deputy director of the ED. They were able to demonstrate to me how the new rapid assessment team is dealing with lower acuity cases and dealing with the waiting times that those people—that is category 4 and category 5 patients—currently face. They indicated to me that their key concern was making sure that there were available beds when they faced their peak so that patients could go through to the wards and allow the emergency department to do its job, as it does so well.

So, that is the range of measures the government has in place. Equally, it is the co-ordinated and considered response of the government that the only way we are going to address the significant issues we face in the ED is working with doctors and nurses, and that is what we will seek to do.

MR SMYTH: I have a supplementary question. Minister, would you not consider a gain of five to 10 beds simply tinkering at the edges rather than addressing the root cause of the hospital crisis, which is the lack of large numbers of acute beds and not enough staff?

MR CORBELL: I reject the claim that it is tinkering at the edges. The view the clinicians I have spoken to in the past 24 to 48 hours have indicated to me—

Mrs Dunne: Who have been nobbled.

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