Page 693 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 11 February 2009
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
politically, has been this complete obsession with emergency department timeliness and elective surgery timeliness.
I am not saying that they are not important, but I would argue that they are not the only indicators of a quality health system. I think in relation to emergency department timeliness, it will be difficult, particularly in times of GP shortage and particularly when our emergency departments are dealing with 100,000 presentations a year, to meet those timeliness targets. I do not think it is impossible, but I think in categories 3 and 4, which are the areas that we do need to improve, it will be difficult.
I would challenge the AMA’s public hospital report card as a journal of quality health performance reports. I would, instead, urge Mr Hanson to look at the AIHW’s Australian hospital statistics and the commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing state of our public hospitals report which, whilst it also reports on emergency departments and elective surgery, also reports on a whole load of other areas. It shows the ACT doing extremely well. In fact, those statistics show that the ACT population is the healthiest in the country.
I will just quickly go through some of the areas. In emergency department presentations, 100 per cent of our category 1 presentations are seen on time. This is something that we have achieved for the past six years. In category 2 in 2007-08, 81 per cent of presentations were seen within 10 minutes. This not only exceeds the national target, but also is better than the 77 per cent reported the previous year and the 71 per cent reported the year before that.
What I am saying is that there are genuine improvements. Even though in categories 3 and 4 we have not made the national benchmarks yet, there are genuine improvements in emergency department timeliness. The emergency department staff have been working very hard over the past two years. I have probably been down there and met with them at least five times to talk with them about emergency department work. They have all been focused on trying to improve timeliness.
Some of that improvement has come because of the extra beds. We have set up the medical assessment and planning unit and the registrar review clinic. Of course, as I say, the extra hospital beds have come online. These are all initiatives which will continue to help our emergency department. We have 25 additional beds coming online in the first half of this year. We are almost ready to start construction on the mental health assessment unit. Again, that will help our emergency department staff.
These ideas have come from them and we are responding to them. The surgical assessment and planning unit, which is modelled on the medical assessment and planning unit, or MAPU, will provide a similar service to the medical assessment and planning unit, except that it will be for surgical patients. Again, this will quickly remove them from the emergency department, freeing up beds and allowing emergency department staff to see patients in the waiting room.
I turn to elective surgery. The report on the state of our public hospitals deals with data from 2006-07, even though it is published in June 2008. I would say that all the reports that you are seeing cover periods of time that are almost two to 2½ years old.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .