Page 5542 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 17 November 2010
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MS HUNTER: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Minister, what feedback has ACTION received in the past about its communication of route changes and how has ACTION taken on this feedback in developing its latest communication strategies?
MR STANHOPE: I will take that question on notice.
MS LE COUTEUR: A supplementary.
MR SPEAKER: Yes, Ms Le Couteur.
MS LE COUTEUR: Minister, as it was not a timetable that was actually distributed to households, can I ask: when will there be adequate supplies of the printed bus timetable available?
MR STANHOPE: I thought there were. Certainly I will take Ms Le Couteur’s question on notice. I am not aware of any suggestion that there are not adequate timetables or information available.
Health—diabetes services
MR DOSZPOT: My question is to the Minister for Health. Minister, I refer to an article in the Canberra Times of 29 October where several doctors raised serious concerns with diabetes services in the ACT, including staff shortages, frustration, disagreements, loss of morale and the ultimate paralysis of the whole process. Minister, are the doctors’ concerns legitimate or will you describe these complaints as “just doctor politics”?
MS GALLAGHER: As I am quoted in that article, I think I acknowledge that there have been some delays in appointing a clinical director for the diabetes service at the hospital and that that position is now being advertised. I expect that some of the concerns raised by the doctors will be addressed through the provision of this clinical director position.
The decision that the stakeholder group had taken, and with ACT Health leading that, was that they needed to get agreement around the diabetes service and then appoint the clinical director in order to drive that. And there has not been agreement about the way to provide that, so the clinical director position has not been filled. I think, in hindsight, it would have been preferable to appoint the clinical director, to get them to drive the agreement around the provision of diabetes services across the ACT. In fact, that is what will happen now, because there still is not necessarily agreement amongst all of the players, both inside the hospital and outside the hospital, about the provision of diabetes care. Senior endocrinologists in the hospital believe that more should be done in the hospital; less done in the community. With people in the community—GPs, for example—Diabetes ACT believes that there are more things they could do in the community. So it is a bit about trying to pull that together.
I am very confident that the contract for the non-government service is out. I think that is for about $400,000. Once the clinical director position is filled, I think the
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