Page 2956 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 16 October 2007
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Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, there has been some debate about the worth of acute and subacute beds. I think it is important to recognise that subacute beds play a very important role in the overall public hospital system. These subacute beds, which provide rehabilitation and geriatric support, provide a valuable service to the ACT community. If patients were not able to access these beds they would be tying up acute care beds, forcing more cancellations of elective surgery and forcing more pressure on the public hospital system.
The government recognises that it is not just about new money, nor is it about new buildings, wards and equipment. We have done all of those things. There is also the very important issue of recruitment of skilled nursing, medical and allied health staff. ACT Health has done very well with both the recruitment and retention of nurses, particularly in an environment where there is an international shortage of skilled health professionals. Take nursing, for example: we have cut the separation rate from 14.5 per cent in 2000-01 to just 7.7 per cent in 2006-07. We have halved the separation rate for nursing staff leaving the public hospital system. That is a very strong result.
I now want to turn to the issue of emergency departments and how we are managing in our emergency departments. All category 1 emergency department presentations continue to be seen and treated on arrival, as they should. The timeliness results in our emergency departments have improved in 2006-07, with category 2 presentation timeliness—that is the second most urgent category—improving from 71 per cent seen on time in 2005-06 to 77 per cent seen on time in 2006-07. The national target for category 2 patients is 80 per cent, so we are close to reaching that target—a great result. Over the same period, timeliness for category 3 presentations has improved from 44 per cent seen on time to 47 per cent seen on time, and timeliness for category 4 presentations has improved from 47 per cent seen on time to 49 per cent seen on time. With our category 5 patients, who should receive care within two hours, we perform well above the national target of 70 per cent, with 82 per cent receiving care on time in the 2006-07 year. Due to the good results in this category, the ACT has actually set itself a target above the national target—that is, 85 per cent of category 5 patients receiving care on time.
Of course, our ongoing concern is category 3 and 4 presentations, where care should be provided within 30 and 60 minutes respectively. We have seen improvements in these areas, but there is still work to do before we reach the targets. We are doing that work. In order to improve these results we have introduced a number of initiatives to reduce pressures on our emergency departments and improve the flow of patients from the emergency department into other areas of the hospital. These initiatives come from the access improvement program introduced in the 2005-06 budget when I was minister. The access improvement program is based on the concept of the patient journey, and it builds on the input of front line nurses and doctors, as Mr Mulcahy says. We draw on their immediate expertise and experience, and it is about overhauling and redesigning the processes of care, doctors and nurses working to improve care by focusing on the patient’s journey.
Some of these initiatives I have already mentioned, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, such as establishing the fast track systems program, which identifies patients that do
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