Page 445 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 13 February 2013
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What we end up with is a situation that is not just about statistics. It is about real people often in pain, often in distress, who are waiting longer than they should for treatment. There is a lot of pain and discomfort and there is an impact on people’s health. I would have thought it is self-evident that if you are in a position where you need to go to the ED and you have to sit there waiting longer than you should or you are admitted in time frames longer than those within which you should be admitted, there is an impact on your health.
Indeed, the Medical Journal of Australia in February 2012 did a review. It looked at WA’s four-hour rule, which was implemented successfully. It found that 80 lives had been saved. It makes the point that if you do not get people into their beds quickly, if you do not treat them quickly, there is an impact on people’s health. It does not always result, obviously, in fatality. But it will often result in their treatment being delayed or less effective than it would otherwise have been. As I said, there is also the issue that we may be missing out on funding.
What we need to know is why the demand is increasing. Why are we waiting longer than everybody else? How can we better support our staff? How can we do all this? How can we fix the problem? I do not know all the answers. We took some to the election. The government took some. Katy Gallagher is trying to get the problem fixed but it just is not getting fixed. That is the reality.
In 2010 we had a similar problem, a real crisis in waiting times for elective surgery. The government again said, “Yes, all right. We are fixing it. We are fixing it.” We were not. It was getting worse and worse and worse. At that point, I moved a motion in this place calling for a review of elective surgery. The motion was passed with the support at that time of the Greens.
The crisis that we had in elective surgery was referred to the Auditor-General and the Auditor-General conducted a performance review. As a result of that performance review, she noted there were some real problems. I will quote from the report:
ACT Health conducted an internal review of the outpatient services at TCH and a draft report in October 2010 found deficiencies in strategic planning, inconsistent application of policies and procedures across the OPDs, ad hoc processes for managing the waiting lists, and poor and inefficient communications with clinicians, consumers and staff.
She also said:
The strategies implemented by ACT Heath have not been adequate to address increased demand, and reduce the waiting lists for elective surgery.
So the Auditor-General recognised a whole bunch of problems that were not being addressed. She provided some recommendations. The government has worked hard to implement those recommendations and we have seen improvements. So the model is there before us. The model is there. The government is struggling to come up with solutions, to come up with a result. The Auditor-General came in with a fresh
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