Page 992 - Week 04 - Thursday, 3 May 2007
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Hospitals—equipment disposals
(Question No 1469)
Mr Smyth asked the Minister for Health, upon notice, on 28 February 2007:
(1) What is the dollar value of equipment disposed of by ACT public hospitals because it had reached, or would soon reach, its expiration date for (a) 2001-2002, (b) 2002-2003, (c) 2003-2004, (d) 2004-2005, (e) 2005-2006 and (f) 2006-2007 to date;
(2) What are each of these pieces of equipment and how many items of each were disposed of in the years listed in part (1);
(3) What inventory controls are in place to minimise this waste;
(4) When were these controls last reviewed for effectiveness;
(5) How many weeks and/or days prior to each piece of equipment expiring is it known that the equipment is surplus to the hospital’s needs and will most likely expire;
(6) What action has the Government taken to transfer excess equipment, either between ACT hospitals or to other hospitals and health services in Australia or overseas, when it becomes apparent that it is surplus to the individual hospital’s needs.
Ms Gallagher: The answer to the member’s question is as follows:
The information I am providing is for ACT Health facilities and does not include the Little Company of Mary facilities run on behalf of ACT Health as those facilities’ assets are not on the ACT Health Asset Register.
The information is for the financial years 2002-03 to current. It does not include archived data from 2001-02. I am advised that the information sought for the 2001-02 financial year is not in an easily retrievable form, and that to collect and assemble the information sought solely for the purpose of answering the question would be a major task, requiring a considerable diversion of resources. In this instance, I do not believe that it would be appropriate to divert resources for the purposes of answering that component of the Member’s question.
The information provided in response to questions 1 and 2 is for assets only, that is items greater than $5,000. Items costing less that $5,000 are treated as consumables, being expensed at time of purchase.
(1,2) The attached lists detail items written off from the ACT Health asset register for the years 2002 to current. Both the purchase price and written down value of the assets is shown. As would be expected, the dollar written down value of these items at the time of disposal is, in most instances, zero.
(3) ACT Health has an asset management plan in place for equipment over $5,000. The ACT Health asset management plan incorporates policy, guidelines and tools to enable condition assessments to take into consideration criticality, utilisation, functionality and presentation of the assets. A risk assessment is made taking into consideration effective condition and failure modes such as safety, technological obsolescence, serviceability and cost effectiveness.
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