Page 3849 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 4 December 2007
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to ask a question and made to look like a fool because it is essentially a dorothy dixer and I have been able to put on the record what the government is doing. Access block has declined. You cannot argue with it. The information is provided nationally.
Mr Smyth: You can.
MS GALLAGHER: You can if you are Mrs Burke, who would argue her way out of a coffin or would try to. There are no indications that the work we have put in place to deal with access block and to deal with the performances in the emergency department is not working.
Mr Smyth: Go and talk to the nurses.
MS GALLAGHER: Mr Smyth would know this. Every single measure of the performance of the emergency department shows the figures are going the right way. That does not mean that the emergency department is not under pressure. It says that the systemic changes we have made are working. They are delivering, and patients are not experiencing the levels of access block that they have experienced in the past.
MR SPEAKER: Supplementary question, Mrs Dunne?
MRS DUNNE: Thank you, Mr Speaker. On the basis that the minister thinks that this is a dorothy dixer—
MR SPEAKER: Come back to the question, please.
MRS DUNNE: can she please tell us what she is doing to free up emergency beds for those people who are still waiting on waiting lists?
MS GALLAGHER: I thank Mrs Dunne for the dorothy supplementary. For the benefit of the Assembly, I can explain what the government has been doing. We have boosted staffing with over $1 million extra to employ more nurses and more doctors in the emergency department. We have established the medical assessment and planning unit, which provides for a quick transfer of more complex patients arriving at the ED.
Mrs Burke: Is MAPU working? I don’t think so.
MS GALLAGHER: Mrs Burke says that that is not working; I would ask her to go and visit that unit and see it not working.
Mrs Burke: It is not about that. I am talking to the nurses.
MS GALLAGHER: Go and talk to the nurses in the MAPU and say that this is not working. Go on. Go and talk to the patients in the MAPU and say that this is not working.
Mrs Burke interjecting—
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