Page 1077 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 30 March 2011
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elective surgery improved? In what sense is it working as the minister would have us believe?
The truth is that in many cases, as the report shows, access has not improved; it has worsened. The minister’s defence on this is to point to the fact that more surgery was done this year than last year, and she will no doubt go to great lengths to say: “Look, we are doing more surgery. That is the reason.” But you have got to recall that last year a lot of surgery was cancelled because of the swine flu epidemic. So you need to look at what is then a big increase since the year before, when we had normal rates of surgery, and you will see that over that two-year period we have actually only completed an extra 230 additional surgeries.
We have got 5,000 people waiting on the list, and over 700 have been waiting over a year. The minister’s big claim is that since a couple of years ago we have done 230 extra surgeries. But that is not really filling the demand, and that is the point. She will try and relate it compared to last year but she will probably forget to make the point that, “Yes, well, we actually cancelled a whole bunch of surgeries last year, so excuse the figures.”
Let me now turn to emergency departments. Category 1 patients are required to be seen immediately. That continues to be so, and that is what I would expect. But, if you look at all other categories, you see a deterioration, a worsening. So for category 2, with emergency treatment to start within 10 minutes, the percentage of people seen on time has gone from 82.5 to 80.2, so a 2.3 per cent deterioration. For category 3, meant to be seen within 30 minutes, the percentage of people has worsened from 60.8 to 55.6, so that has gone down 5.2 percentage points—and it is 20 percentage points below target, I will point out.
For category 4, semi-urgent patients who are meant to be seen within 60 minutes, the percentage of people seen on time has worsened by 3.8 per cent this year; it is now 52.9 per cent, which is 17 per cent below target. I note also that it is actually a target that has been reduced. The target was 75 per cent until a couple of years ago; it is now 70 per cent.
Category 5 has got worse again. I note that that is another target that has been reduced. The target was for 85 per cent to be seen on time; it is now 70 per cent to be seen on time. But fewer of these patients were seen on time as well, with a 1.2 per cent deterioration. So across all categories, except for the immediate, there has been a deterioration, a worsening. They did not improve.
What is the most staggering of all the statistics is the number of patients who did not wait for treatment; that is, people who essentially gave up waiting for treatment. This number increased by 14 per cent this year. It is now a staggering 6,030 people, which is 753 people more than last year. Back in 2005-06, the “did not wait” figure was 2,000. That is an increase of nearly 4,000 people a year since that period. So, since the minister has been in office, since she has been the minister, that is a 300 per cent increase in people that are giving up on our emergency departments. And she has the audacity to claim that there is improved access to care.
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