Page 114 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 16 February 2011
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(4) the recent very poor performance of ACT’s public hospitals, recording the worst results in the nation for elective surgery on the My Hospitals website;
(5) unacceptable waiting times at the Emergency Department at TCH for urgent and semi-urgent patients, with both categories falling well below nationally recognised waiting times;
(6) the Minister’s failure to address the ACT’s ongoing chronic shortage of general practitioners which is the lowest per capita in Australia behind the Northern Territory, and chronically low bulk-billing rates which are the lowest per capita in the nation;
(7) two years of disruption and delay to developing improved hospital services in Canberra’s north, caused in part by the Minister’s failed attempt to waste $77 million of taxpayers’ money during the Calvary Hospital purchase fiasco;
(8) the Minister’s failure to address serious concerns raised by medical staff and patients with diabetes services in the ACT, including staff shortages, loss of morale, delays in appointing the clinical director, concerns with the diabetes service model, delays for patients to see endocrinologists and diabetes educators, and inadequate services for young adults;
(9) dysfunctional communication with patients and families, including families of infants exposed to tuberculosis at TCH, the family of the ACT’s first Swine Flu fatality, and cancer patients seeking radiotherapy who were ignored while being forced interstate for treatment; and
(10) disruption, ongoing delays and cost blowouts across numerous health infrastructure projects totalling $57 million in rollovers in the ACT Budget 2009-10 and $50 million in the Budget 2010-11, including extensive delays and cost blowouts that plagued TCH car park, the still undelivered Secure Mental Health Facility, the delayed Women’s and Children’s Hospital and the delayed Bush Healing Farm.
Today the Canberra Liberals will be sending a message to the health minister from the thousands of Canberrans who are waiting for elective surgery, who cannot get in to see a GP, or who have waited for hours in emergency departments. We want to send a message from our overstretched staff, the ones that Minister Gallagher often accuses me of attacking but is so quick to blame once the heat is turned on her.
I want to send a message that her performance is simply not good enough. When you look at the long lists of failures and the deteriorating outcomes in health in the ACT, it is quite clear that she has simply not got the job done. It is also clear to me that broad sections of the community have lost confidence in this minister. Patients have lost confidence in the minister. Health professionals I talk to have lost confidence in the minister.
To put this into perspective, Mr Speaker, in late December last year, the president of the Visiting Medical Officers Association, with the support of his association, wrote to Jon Stanhope asking for him to dismiss Minister Gallagher as the health minister.
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