Page 1087 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 30 March 2011
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Mr Smyth interjecting—
MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Mr Smyth!
MS GALLAGHER: Mr Smyth, I have tabled the bed data in this place twice—
Mr Smyth interjecting—
MS GALLAGHER: to show where the beds were removed and when they were removed. Yes, it has taken a long time. We have replaced those beds. Indeed, now we have 912 beds for our acute system to manage. What do we see from those acute beds? We see that our bed occupancy rates have, for the first time, gone below 85 per cent and are now within the AMA target. This is because of the investments and that improves access to care for Canberrans.
Mr Smyth interjecting—
MS GALLAGHER: In all of this report, yes, there are areas to improve. There will always be areas to improve in the health system. But my comments about improving access to care or increasing access to care are correct, and nobody can prove that otherwise. Yes, there is more work to be done. I look forward to working with Assembly members as we continue to improve our hospital system. I think it is time that we had a look at our performance measures and worked out ways to better report and report more fairly about the performance of the health system to provide that information to the community. That is work that I undertake to do.
But, whereas I have not spoken about the negatives, Mr Hanson, I note your motion does not even go to one positive, which is more than half of this report.
Mr Hanson interjecting—
MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ms Le Couteur): Before we continue, members, can I just remind you of the need to hear the person who is speaking in silence.
MS BRESNAN (Brindabella) (3.48): I acknowledge Mr Hanson’s motion today that seeks to provide an update on the state of the ACT health system with a focus on elective surgery and the emergency department. There is truth in the statistics that Mr Hanson lists, particularly in relation to subparagraph (i) of his motion, and there is also truth in his subparagraph (ii) in that the minister did provide a somewhat glossy foreword to the quarterly report as well as a somewhat glossy media release. But there is something else to this debate: Mr Hanson’s interpretation of the statistics is dramatised, I have to say, to some extent, because there are other important statistics that he has not listed.
It seems that, just as the minister is willing to gloss over the good stuff in the report—I am sorry; gloss over the bad stuff in the report, I should say—Mr Hanson is willing to gloss over the good stuff and that the truth is somewhere in between. These battles make it hard, I think, to get the truth out to the public. While elective surgery waiting
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