Page 2665 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 29 June 2010
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have misled the Assembly or there is anything wrong with the documents that have been in circulation. There are plenty of other documents that doctors write around management of the elective surgery lists. It is all part of how you manage the health system. Every single system does it and they do it to make sure that the most urgent get access to care first.
Mr Smyth: But you denied that they did it. You misled—
MS GALLAGHER: I did not.
Mr Smyth: You denied that they asked the question—
MS GALLAGHER: I completely reject the allegations being put by the Liberals—
Mr Smyth: You denied that they asked the question and they do.
MS GALLAGHER: that surgeons—well, the question that the Liberals put to me, in total isolation from anything else, was: does ACT Health ask doctors to downgrade their patients?
Mr Smyth: Yes.
MS GALLAGHER: They do not. They ask their doctors to appropriately classify their patients. If those doctors accept that surgery does not need to be performed in 30 days then obviously that patient is not a category 1 patient. If there is agreement that that patient is not as urgent as needing to be seen in 30 days then obviously that does not fit the criteria for category 1.
This is a process of managing the list. The hospital does an excellent job. We have got more work to do but I have not misled the Assembly and the opposition has failed to give any evidence of where I have.
MS BRESNAN (Brindabella) (10.32): Mr Hanson claims that the minister has misled the Assembly. The Greens do not agree with Mr Hanson’s assertion. The minister stated last week that there was a policy in place by which only doctors could downgrade a patient, and that remains the case and the facts.
Mr Smyth: The question is: did they ask?
MR SPEAKER: Mr Smyth, let us not start.
MS BRESNAN: The proposal that has been circulated about corrected downgrades is merely that: a proposal which has been put forward by a doctor. I believe it is worth noting that—
Mr Corbell: A bit of Stalinist revisionism there from Mr Smyth.
Mr Smyth: From the persistent and wilful misleader, Mr Corbell. I would be careful if I were you.
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