Page 2685 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 6 June 2012
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… the classification of clinical urgency categories did not always reflect ACT Health’s policy and procedures, and therefore raised doubts on the reliability and appropriateness of the clinical classifications for patients within the waiting list. …
… 250 patients in Category 1 were reclassified and a significant number of these reclassifications (97 percent) occurred without documented clinical reasons;
And some other select quotes: “no evidence of having been approved by a doctor”, “downgrades of a patient’s urgency, often without documented clinical reasons”, “raised considerable doubts about the reliability and appropriateness of the clinical classifications for patients on the waiting lists”. So dodgy elective surgery, dodgy EDs and appalling results—figures that have nearly doubled since this government took office in terms of waiting times. What we are seeing with elective surgery and the emergency department is this big cash splash: “Let’s try and make it look better, particularly with elective surgery. Let’s shovel it out to the private sector because we’ve broken the public sector when it comes to elective surgery.”
We have had a decade of pain. This was caused by Labor because it was Jon Stanhope in 2003, when he cut funding, who said, “There will be pain.” There has been pain. The pain has been suffered and inflicted on the ACT community who wait longer than anyone else in the nation for emergency department treatment or elective surgery.
When the doctors complained—and Katy Gallagher was in here yesterday complaining and saying, “Don’t attack the staff”—and came forward and said, “We’ve been bullied; 13 of our colleagues have resigned because we’ve been bullied,” Katy Gallagher attacked them. She denied there were any problems and then attacked them. Let me quote from Katy Gallagher when these allegations were first aired:
… stop throwing stones and damaging the unit …
… all I’ve seen is a lot of mud being slung around and no substantiation.
No substantiation, just mud-slinging. They then attacked the doctors. They threatened them with the Medical Board, dredging through the last 10 years of Medical Board reviews. This is Stanhope: “The external expert reviewer also do an audit of all complaints to the medical boards current and say over the past 10 years.” It was a threat. It was seen by the doctors as a threat because that is what it was. But then the clinical review came out and it was damning. It said:
There is evidence of systemic reticence to address staff performance issues …
an apparent lack of cohesion …
considerable confusion …
the chain of command often fails …
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