Page 777 - Week 02 - Thursday, 25 February 2010
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delivered back in the year 2000. Our long-wait list, people waiting longer than one year, has dropped from 702 at the end of December 2008 to 645 at the end of December 2009. And that is despite the fact that we had to wind back our elective surgery program because of the swine flu and the number of people that required intensive care beds. I think we will reach the target of 9,700 procedures for the year.
When you look at ambulance off-stretcher time, 99 per cent of ambulances were offloaded at the ED within 20 minutes during the first six months of 2009-10. That is well above the target of 90 per cent.
Mr Hanson went to bed occupancy rates. They have decreased further, to 88 per cent for the first three months of 2009-10, and that figure is decreasing. In fact, it has never been that low since it was measured. Nobody has ever done better than that since it was measured. There should be a little bit of acknowledgement of the work that is being delivered at the hospital and the outcomes that are being achieved.
There are a further 24 hospital beds funded in this budget as well as, I think, 25 bed equivalents counted through hospital in the home. We have opened a new 16-bed short-stay surgical unit, the six-bed mental health assessment unit and a further two beds for intensive care services at the Canberra Hospital.
Let us go to bypass, which was one of Mr Smyth’s favourite pastimes. I miss your monthly report on that, Mr Smyth. The leak must have stopped, did it? We never did work out how you were getting those figures.
Mr Smyth: You would be surprised whom one chats to in the street.
MS GALLAGHER: One day, over a glass of wine, Mr Smyth, you will have to tell me how you were getting those. We have all moved on from there, I am sure. It was with some intrigue that we often wondered how you were getting them, often before I did. Our bypass, on which we will always argue and have always argued—and I think secretly Mr Smyth understands as well—for the year to date, for six months, is down to 53.3 hours, which is much lower than it was several years ago and is lower than the 60.4 hours reported for the same period last year. This is despite our hospital dealing with an eight per cent increase in the number of patients coming through.
That is some very good data, I think, to put in perspective and to contrast some of the allegations that Mr Hanson is putting forward in terms of his views and his perspectives of the performance of the ACT health system. There are a range of other very good outcomes.
If we look at women’s and children’s health, for example, the ACT’s proportion of low birth-weight babies born of Indigenous mothers, that result was 18.9 per cent. It related to a small number of babies. If we look at some of the intervention rates for first-time mothers, it continues to be significantly lower than for the rest of the country. And this is from our public hospitals. The preliminary data for 2008 was that intervention for first-time mothers was 23.3 per cent, well below the national average of 30.4 per cent. The ACT caesarean rate for first-time mothers dropped from 20 per cent in 2007 to 14.8 per cent in 2008, while the national figure remained at 22.6 per cent.
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