Page 2087 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 21 June 2011
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form has changed. There will be no recategorisation of patients without the appropriate sign-off from their treating clinician. All of these have been in place and have been in place for some time.
I am not sure that that will make too much of a difference for individual patients themselves and I think what it will ensure is that the record-keeping processes to ensure that there is clear transparency in decision making will be there to back up that transparency and those decisions. Again, I do not think there has been any evidence provided that those recategorisations should not have occurred. What it has said is that they have occurred and we have not recorded the data, whether it be the doctor has not provided it or the surgical booking unit has not ticked the right boxes. That is what we need to fix. And it is fixed.
MR HANSON: A supplementary, Mr Speaker?
MR SPEAKER: Yes, Mr Hanson.
MR HANSON: Minister, given your previous denials of any problems in the management of the elective surgery waiting lists, how can the people of the ACT have confidence that the current lists are being managed appropriately?
MS GALLAGHER: I do not think that I have ever said that there is not room for improvement in our management of our elective surgery waiting lists. In fact, I have come into this place repeatedly and said that there is. Indeed, I think the latest results that we have had, showing very significant improvement in the management of the lists, are testament to some of the processes that we have put in place.
The Auditor-General had a very good look at this and made a number of recommendations. The government has accepted the majority of them. I will be providing the government’s response to that report, I think in the next sitting period, and the government’s response to all of those recommendations will be clear. I know that there has been enormous work put in at the Canberra Hospital, and indeed in negotiations with Calvary hospital, about how we can improve the management of the waiting lists. Indeed, I think the only recommendation that we do not agree with—we agree in part, but we cannot necessarily deliver it—is the Auditor-General’s recommendation that we have one waiting list for the whole of Canberra and that it be centralised. That simply comes down to the ownership arrangements between the two public hospitals.
Where we can and do have influence to deliver the outcome, I can assure members in this place that those issues that the Auditor-General has identified have been responded to. Processes have been implemented to make sure that, from the record-keeping point of view, which is essentially what this came down to, they are all robust, clear and transparent. I know that through annual reports, estimates and all the rest of it, the opposition will keep their interest in this, and we will provide them with information to show them just how improved our processes are. It is a credit to the Health Directorate staff and the staff of the surgical booking unit that they have been able to deal with this so quickly.
MS BRESNAN: A supplementary.
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