Page 3848 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 4 December 2007
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which indicated some early results which we believe show that access block was at 30 per cent. Before those numbers have been finalised, as they are when we report quarterly—and we check this data over and over again because this is the data that we are required to report nationally against—it is extremely important that there is an opportunity given to finalise that data to make sure it is correct.
In fact, the final data for the July figures show that access block was at 28.1 per cent, despite the six per cent increase in activity at the emergency department for that month alone. That means that we are seeing more patients than ever before, more patients are coming through the emergency department, and we are still maintaining a decreasing level of access block.
What does that show? The extra investment in the emergency department, over $1 million in extra resources and extra staffing, shows that the opening of the MAPUs is working and that we are getting people out of the emergency department faster than we have over the last three to four years, particularly for people over the age of 75 where the access block being experienced was around 42 per cent some two or 2½ years ago.
We are seeing a continuing decrease in the level of access block. We have set ourselves the target of 25 per cent. That target has never been reached. That target was set when access block was 40 per cent. This government set that. That is not good enough, and we need to reduce that. What do you do? You set yourself a target to reduce it. Then what do you do? You put in processes to make sure that target is reached. What have we seen ever since we set that target? Ever since that target there has been consistent decline in the levels of access block being experienced at the hospital.
Mrs Burke: That is not true.
MS GALLAGHER: Mrs Burke says, “That is not true.”
MR SPEAKER: Ignore her; it is an interjection.
MS GALLAGHER: I would have thought that Mrs Burke would have learnt from recent experience how embarrassing interjections can be; namely, booing and hissing senior journalists during the press club speech, the dying speech, of a prime minister on the way out. What do we have? We have Bill and Jacqui booing and hissing up at the back of the press club. It made the national media.
Mrs Burke: What has this got to do with waiting times?
MS GALLAGHER: It is relevant to the interjections that I am experiencing and the accusation that I am not telling the truth, because that is what Mrs Burke is alleging.
Mr Smyth: Can’t you answer the question about access block?
MS GALLAGHER: I have answered the question. I cannot make it clearer. Access block is declining. It has been declining consistently. Poor Mrs Dunne has been made
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