Page 3610 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 21 November 2007
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MS GALLAGHER: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. There is constant criticism of the health system, when there are simply no grounds to support that. The opposition have to accept that there have been massive improvements in the hospital system since we have come to government. In fact, even in the last quarter, we can go through the achievements of the health system as it is performing. We have more doctors and more nurses than ever before and—guess what—fewer bureaucrats, Mrs Burke. We have told you this—
Mrs Burke: I’m not saying more. Who said more bureaucrats? Not me.
MS GALLAGHER: You constantly go on about the increase in bureaucrats in ACT Health, when there has actually been a decline and more frontline health services are being provided. That is why ACT Health has grown. In fact, since I have been minister 95 per cent of the increases in staff have been in extra doctors and nurses into our hospital, because that is what runs a hospital—doctors and nurses—Mrs Burke.
In the fourth quarter of last financial year, we have seen significant achievement in ACT Health and in the Canberra Hospital. In fact, let us look at it: emergency department access block, down to 26.3 per cent, the lowest recorded in three years; a decrease in bed occupancy from 97 to 91 per cent in the same quarter; record access to elective surgery, 9,326 people receiving elective surgery in 2006-07, which was 200 more than the previous year and up 1,400 from the last four to five years—
Mrs Burke: Oh!
MS GALLAGHER: Mrs Burke sighs at that. Mrs Burke sighs because she cannot accept that there are good things happening in ACT Health—and they are happening in the Canberra Hospital. Day surgery admissions are better than target; a reduction of 19 per cent in the rate of hospital-initiated postponements due to no available beds; waiting times for hospital assessment by the aged care assessment teams remains lower than two days; all emergency dental cases seen within 24 hours; all urgent radiotherapy cases received care within the target time; an increase of seven per cent in the number of women who have had breast screens; immunisation rates consistently above the national benchmark; 147 extra beds over the last four budgets and an injected additional $34 million into the hospital system for additional elective surgery.
So where is the bad news in that, Mrs Burke? Where is the management failure in that? Where is the system letting everyone down in that? You cannot support your argument. You do not have the arguments to support a new management system at the Canberra Hospital. All a hospital board will do is bring back an outdated, probably 1950s or 1960s, model of hospital administration. It is not how it is done anymore. Hospital boards are not how it is done. Traditionally they have been a haven for very influential people to pursue their own agendas—not to look at the system as a whole, not to make the decisions across the hospital as a whole, not to respond to the increasing demands in particular areas. That is not how it happens under a board.
In fact, if the coalition win on the weekend—in that very unlikely scenario that the federal coalition will win on the weekend—if they impose a hospital board on the
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