Page 3486 - Week 08 - Thursday, 18 August 2011
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MS BRESNAN (Brindabella) (11.18), by leave: In the debate on the Health Amendment Bill on 29 March I noted that, despite the Local Hospital Network being set up, the Greens would not want to see the disbanding of the ACT Health Council. While the Chief Minister said yesterday in the MPI discussion on the social determinants of health that the LHN Council would have a broader mandate than just hospitals, the vast majority of its work will focus on issues around the LHN and, consequently, around the hospital issues that flow out of that. In the Health Amendment Bill debate I also said that if the function of the Health Council were to change at all, it should be directed towards looking at the bigger picture of population and population health, as the hospital network obviously, again, will focus on hospitals.
The positives of having a health council are that it can look at a far greater range of issues that do not have to relate to hospitals. I think it is disappointing that we are seeing the disbanding of the Health Council. While the LHN Council will have a broad membership, as we have seen, it will very much be focused on those issues around the implementation of the LHN. I think it is disappointing that we will not have the Health Council as it has a far greater mandate.
My fear in this is that increasingly governments seem to be caught up more and more with a focus around acute hospitals and the factors which flow out of that. They do not always then look at the full spectrum of factors which they need to consider for improved health outcomes for people, and that includes the ACT community. Again, I register a disappointment that the Health Council has been disbanded. It is not something we support. It is disappointing that we will not have that broader council which has a far greater mandate in terms of the health issues that affect the community.
ACT Health—performance reports
Statement by minister
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development, Minister for Territory and Municipal Services and Minister for Police and Emergency Services), by leave: On behalf of Minister Gallagher as Minister for March, in March this year the Assembly passed a motion in regard to the health system’s reports provided by the government. In that motion members asked Ms Gallagher to investigate developing outcome measures to be reported in annual and quarterly reports and report back to the Assembly by the first sitting week in August.
Before I speak directly about the outcome measures, I would like to make some comments about our current quarterly and annual reports. I would like to note, Madam Deputy Speaker, that the ACT has been at the forefront of publishing public reports on the state of our health system. We commenced reporting extensive details of the health system to the public back in 2004. The territory was the first jurisdiction in the nation to provide a comprehensive health system’s performance report. Since that time the quarterly performance report has undergone numerous iterations to improve the level of detail contained in the report to provide the public with a comprehensive
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