Page 951 - Week 04 - Thursday, 3 May 2007
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It is nice to see that mental health got the accreditation; that is great. But how is it that two years after the announcement we are yet to see a plan or a sod turned or a commitment of dollars to build the mental health precinct that Mr Corbell said would open in 2008? Even if it is funded in this year’s budget, there is no way a completed precinct is going to open in 2008.
That is the sort of commitment that weighs us down, and that is the sort of lack of commitment that only leads to the minimal level of achievement being achieved. So the important thing here is that we make sure that we are addressing things like access block, access through the emergency department, where except for category 1—where unless you get attention you die—we suffer and we see declines in a significant area in some of the other categories.
What we have to do is address bed block. But that is still not occurring. We still have access block in the system when we should not have. You have to remember that as a jurisdiction, despite spending more money on health than any other jurisdiction in the country, we have the lowest numbers of beds of any other jurisdiction in the country.
These are the indicators that show that the government is not fair dinkum about health. We are yet to see the much-vaunted reforms of the last budget. It will be interesting to see this year’s budget and the annual reports, to see whether the government has been able to constrain spending, from the 11 per cent or 12 per cent that it has historically been, back to the seven per cent or eight per cent that it is aiming for and what effect that will have on the numbers in terms of throughput, the numbers of people on the elective surgery waiting list and patient satisfaction.
People would remember that under Mr Corbell and the Press Ganey survey of satisfaction we were the lowest ranked hospital system in the country. The government did not like the way Press Ganey did the work because it delivered the result that they did not want to hear. So they changed the messenger. They just did not accept that Press Ganey were correct and they changed the way that we are assessed. So we are now getting a report that, whilst it produces some results, is not against the world standard work that Press Ganey does and the work that they do that is compared with so many other hospitals in this country.
All of those factors make it very important for the minister to table the report. I will take her up on the offer of a briefing. I am sure my office is, at this very minute, ringing her senior adviser to arrange that briefing for some time tomorrow or next week. But, without seeing a copy of the report, and without the report being extensively discussed by the community, what we have is a report from the minister that can only be taken at face value—that for 14 we got the minimum level of moderate achievement against the accreditation criteria.
The problem for the government is: how do they shift it even further? The government must acknowledge that there are not enough hospital beds in the ACT; that they are not looking after their staff; that they are not ensuring that we have a health promotion and early intervention platform in which to make sure that we stop people going to the hospital system and that we keep people fitter and healthier longer—all of this against the background of the fact that we have got the healthiest, youngest and fittest population in the country.
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