Page 278 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 7 March 2007
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Hospitals—elective surgery
MS PORTER: My question is to the Minister for Health. Given that the provision of essential and elective surgery by public hospitals is a crucial element of the provision of high-quality public health services to the people of the ACT and one that can place significant pressure on our hospitals, can you advise the Assembly how our hospitals are performing in this regard and of the extent of the demand for public hospital surgical services in the territory?
MS GALLAGHER: I can say that our public hospitals are busier than ever. We are seeing an unexpected and significant increase in the demand for emergency surgery services—up 13 per cent for the last six months, or 512 separations, totalling just over 4,000 emergency operations for the first half of this financial year. At the same time, access to elective surgery in the ACT has been maintained. We have seen 4,537 elective surgery procedures and removals from the list, an amount which is on track with the first half of the last financial year. Overall, we have had a six per cent increase in total surgical activity across the two public hospitals in the ACT.
Whilst we could not have predicted this growth in emergency surgery, I think that the important thing to note here is that we have been able to maintain our capacity to deliver elective surgery, despite this increase in demand for emergency surgery. In the past, a demand of this magnitude—a 13 per cent increase in emergency surgery—would have meant a decrease in the access to elective surgery. That has not been the case.
That is about the investment this government has put into surgical services. It is not just about the dollars, of course, which we have discussed before. It is about the work that is being done to make sure that we have a strategy to deliver services on demand in the future.
We have established the Surgical Services Taskforce, which has as its membership our senior surgeons, nurses and administrators. Their job is to identify new ways of improving the services to the community. It is in its early stages, but I have attended a meeting of that task force and I am confident that this body, because it is made up of people who work in the area—the surgeons, nurses and people who organise the surgery—will be able to come up with solutions for making sure that our surgical services are delivered in the most efficient, patient friendly way that they can be.
This task force will complement the work of the Critical Care Taskforce which has been established to set the direction for critical care services in the future. Already, this task force has delivered on an enormous amount of work. There is an intensive care network strategy for the region, and an inter-hospital transfer policy is already in place.
That is some of the work going on behind the scenes. It is work that is being supported by the addition funding that we have provided to increase access to surgery overall at the hospital. We have increased the operating theatre times. We have commissioned a night theatre at the hospital. We have doubled the amount of non-elective orthopaedic surgery sessions at the Canberra Hospital this year in direct
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