Page 2088 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 21 June 2011
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MR SPEAKER: Yes, Ms Bresnan.
MS BRESNAN: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Minister, has there been any progress with private doctors and VMOs in terms of taking ownership of the elective surgery waiting list policy at TCH?
MS GALLAGHER: There has been slow progress, I would say. I have been to a number of meetings where the VMOs have been represented. I think there is general agreement that we need to work together, that it is not just a problem that the Health Directorate can deal with, that we need to look at other areas such as pooling of patients. We have not been able to reach agreement on that, necessarily. We have reached agreement around better record keeping and around doctors understanding that they cannot just ring up and ask for someone to be recategorised because they are not available, they are going on holidays or they have got another list in their private rooms. So that work has been done and they have cooperated with that, which we are very pleased about. But there is still a way to go in terms of how we are able to share patients across a specialty area and how we encourage doctors. Some doctors are open to that; other doctors are not. I think there is still a way to go. But it is underway. It is slow but it is underway.
Hospitals—elective surgery
MR DOSZPOT: My question is to the Minister for Health. Minister, in yesterday’s Canberra Times you are quoted as saying that one of your priorities is going to be around people waiting too long for access to health care. Minister, on 31 May 2007, you are quoted in an ABC article as stating:
… we are specifically targeting those people who have waited more than one year or more than two years for their surgery.
The most recent published statics show that currently 15 per cent of people are waiting more than a year, which is five times the national average. Minister, how can anyone believe what you say now when you made the same promises four years ago and have comprehensively failed to deliver?
MS GALLAGHER: The comments I made in the Canberra Times—and thank goodness for the Canberra Times, otherwise the Liberals would not have any questions at all—
Mr Doszpot: It is in the Canberra Times, so it must be true.
MS GALLAGHER: It has been such a long time since the Chief Minister has received the attention—and I am very flattered, I have to say—that I am receiving today from those opposite.
Mr Hanson: Mr Speaker, I ask that the Chief Minister, under standing order 42, address her comments through you rather than through the convenor of the Greens.
MR SPEAKER: Ms Gallagher, you have the floor.
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