Page 527 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 16 February 2005
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During this phase-in period, organisations will need to reach at least Some Achievement (SA) for all mandatory criteria to gain or maintain accreditation status, rather than the Moderate Achievement (MA). It is important to note however, that ‘at risk’ issues in any criterion, mandatory or non-mandatory, will be assessed for a high priority recommendation (HPR) using a risk rating approach. If deemed necessary a HPR will be given and the accreditation status will be either non-accreditation or two years with HPRs.
That is the important part: “If deemed necessary a HPR will be given and the accreditation status will either be non-accreditation or two years with HPRS.” May I remind you that the Canberra Hospital only got two-year accreditation. Their press release goes on to say:
As the ACHS Board considers that the achievement of the mandatory criteria is vital for quality and safe care, an SA rating will mean a limited accreditation status of two years. It is expected that the elements of MA—often those relating to data collection, evaluation and improvement of systems and processes—will be in place by 1 January 2005 when all mandatory criteria will need to be achieved at an MA rating to gain accreditation.
Mr Speaker, what did the Canberra Hospital achieve? We got zero; none of the criteria were found to be of some achievement; we got three criteria met with some extensive achievement; we got 28 of the criteria with moderate achievement, we got 11 with only some achievement; and we got one with low achievement. And that related to the poor performance of the management of staff. For the Canberra Hospital to have only attained a two-year accreditation, it has not met the transitional standards of the Australian Council of Healthcare Standards and we can be sure that had the assessment occurred after 1 January this year the Canberra Hospital would have lost its accreditation.
The minister has taken advantage of the technical nature of the ACHS accreditation to muddy the waters; he has been saying, “Yes, we’ve got two-year accreditation; we’ve got accreditation.” But from that press release that I have read from the council itself, you can see that obviously what we have is limited accreditation; that is the status we have for two years.
In the transition period the Australian Council of Healthcare Standards offered three outcomes: full accreditation, which we did not get; non-accreditation, which we did not get; and limited accreditation for two years, which is the outcome for the Canberra Hospital. So despite anything the minister may choose to say, the Canberra Hospital has only got limited accreditation. The shame of that is that it used to have full accreditation.
The minister has made some interesting claims in relation to this issue. And it is a shame that he is off sick because it would be interesting to have him here today to actually explain why he has been shifting on his stories. On the morning we broke the story, he stated that the issues were to do with clinical governance. Mr Speaker, as a former health minister, you would know that “clinical” relates to patients and their care. So, on the morning the story broke, clearly the problems were in clinical issues. The next day the minister was saying that it was due to human resource management issues, which we know they got little achievement on—the lowest rating—but that is only one.
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