Page 2687 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 6 June 2012
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MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: I agree.
MS GALLAGHER: I know he is incapable of showing respect to other members in this place—indeed, getting a lecture from him about bullying is laughable—but I would urge members to give other members the respect they deserve and enable them to provide their comments without interruption.
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes. Stop the clock, Clerk, please. I was just about to warn you, Mr Hanson, because you were going to start again the same way as you were yesterday. So I ask you, and other members of this place on both sides of the house, not to interrupt Ms Gallagher when she is speaking.
MS GALLAGHER: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. This government has worked hard to make the correct investments in the health system, to build the health system that we need for now and into the future, and I have done this consistently as the minister with responsibility for this portfolio area over the last five or six years.
What we know about the emergency department in particular is that we are seeing more and more presentations there every day. This year is building on last year, which is building on the year before. We also know that our less urgent categories, categories 4 and 5, are increasing. They now make up 59 per cent of all of the presentations to the emergency department, and those presentations into the emergency department that do not require admission to an in-patient bed are also much higher here than in the rest of the country.
There are some issues around being a small town with two hospitals serving a region. If you look at every small jurisdiction in terms of how they manage the emergency department there are particular and individual challenges, and the ACT is no different. As we continue to build those services—and we are the major tertiary referral centre for the region—we will continue to see that type of pressure on our emergency departments here.
In addition, the emergency department timeliness is not only about resources in the emergency department; it is around providing extra capacity in the hospital. The further 40 beds, announced yesterday, to be opened across the public hospital system here will build on the 256 beds that we have put into the hospital.
We have seen incredible changes in the health system over the term of this government. I think when we came in the elective surgery load was about 6,000 operations a year; it now exceeds 11,000 and, contrary to what Mr Hanson will say, the majority of that increase has not been seen in the private sector. Probably more than 10½ thousand of those 11,000-odd operations are delivered in the public system. But, yes, we are looking to the private system to help in areas of long waits, low acuity—that is, less serious conditions—and where the volumes can support the private sector being interested.
We are seeing improvements in the median wait time, and importantly we are seeing fewer people on the waiting list. At the moment the waiting list, as a measure of the
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