Page 122 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 16 February 2011
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this can result in an upgrading of someone’s category as well as a reduction based on the needs of the patient and their surgeon.
The letter to the Chief Minister by the president of the Visiting Medical Officers Association was riddled with inaccuracies and errors of fact. I was disappointed that the president of the association, Dr Hughes, did not check these facts before making a call for my sacking. I would think that members of the VMOA would also be upset to think that their representative is making such calls based on errors of fact.
Dr Hughes claimed that we have done nothing as a government to improve the numbers of doctors and nurses in our system. However, the data shows otherwise—a 59 per cent increase in full-time equivalent hospital nursing staff over four years, from 1,280 to 2,035 nurses. In relation to junior staff, it shows that over the four years to this financial year there has been a 53 per cent increase in interns, registered medical officers and senior registrars available for our public hospitals. Numbers of doctors have increased from 276 to 423.
Dr Hughes also said that our hospitals are the most expensive in the nation on a per patient treated basis. However, this is not a valid measure to use in determining the variation in costs between our hospitals and the rest of the nation. The Canberra Hospital provides services to people from the surrounding area of New South Wales as well as the ACT. These services included high cost services such as cardiothoracic surgery, neurosurgery, neonatal intensive care and some cancer treatment services. A more appropriate cost measure is the average cost per casemix adjusted separations. This measure, used as the primary cost indicator by the AIHW for many years, takes into account variations in the type of service provided by hospitals rather than accrued cost per patient figure.
Under the AIHW cost measure, our public hospitals reported an average cost per hospital services just 3.4 per cent above the national average. This figure is down from 24 per cent above national average reported in 2004-05 and the last time the Liberals were in government when it sat at 130 per cent above the national average. This figure is lower than the results reported for Western Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory and just above figures reported for New South Wales and Victoria.
Dr Hughes also claimed the government was doing nothing in relation to improving access to elective surgery, particularly for people with extended waiting times. However, over the first half of the current financial year, a total of 1,625 people with extended waiting times accessed elective surgery at ACT public hospitals, an increase of 16.5 per cent on the total reported for the previous year. The target for elective surgery procedures this year is 10,702 operations. For the first six months of this financial year, our hospitals have completed a total of 5,476 elective surgery operations, five per cent above the target for the period and 13 per cent above what was done last year. On top of this, we are providing access to elective surgery for about 300 people in private facilities in the ACT, further boosting access to care.
All of this additional activity is making a difference to the waiting list. Over the 2010 calendar we managed a 21 per cent reduction in the number of extended-wait patients on the waiting lists, and I expect an even more dramatic reduction over the 2011 year.
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