Page 4332 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 27 November 2013
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should get that based on the priority of when they came on to the list. So with a hip replacement or whatever the procedure is, you have a situation where one patient, because they happen to be someone that can help them to make the list look better, will be operated on within a short time frame, while another patient, who has exactly the same procedure that they need, but because they have ticked over that 90-day mark and no longer will make the lists look better, can languish on that list indefinitely because they are no longer a priority for surgery. That is what is specified in the letter from Calvary and is being alleged by a number of surgeons.
The minister’s representative is denying that but there seems to be this difference in approach, in that surgeons are concerned about their patients and about targeting patients that need surgery in the priority in which they came on the list, whereas ACT Health is concerned about targeting patients who make the lists look better.
You have got two sides to this argument now, because Peggy Brown has come out with a press release which essentially has accused the doctors of lying, saying that the comments are misleading and false. But we have got two surgeons alleging it, we have got a letter from Calvary, from their director of medical services, saying that this is so.
We have a very unfortunate situation where very senior representatives of Calvary and surgeons and doctors’ groups are saying one thing and the Director-General of ACT Health is saying, “That’s not true; they’re lying.” That is a situation that cannot be allowed to continue. This needs clarification. It needs the truth to be told.
If it is the case that people who have been on lists for a period of time and essentially will not make a difference to the data are being left to languish, the minister needs to stand up in this place and say, “Yes, that is true, and I’m doing it deliberately because I do want to make the lists look better because it’s related to funding.” And she needs to defend that. If it is true that this has been done to make the lists look better but the government is denying it, is essentially lying, and then is accusing the doctors of lying, then that is an extraordinary situation.
Sadly, this government has form. This is not the first time that we have raised issues in this place. We have had representations from doctors, patients and doctors’ groups who say something is happening, and the minister and her representatives swear black and blue that that is not the case. They say, “This is simply not the case.” They deny it. When we then get a subsequent investigation, it turns out that the doctors were right and that the minister was wrong, despite her denials.
We saw this in 2010 when we had a patient, Mr David Wentworth, who came forward and said, “I’ve been downgraded from urgent to semi-urgent, and I’ve been told that if you’re not operated on within 30 days the hospital downgrades you.” Doctors then backed that up, but the minister, when these allegations were raised, said, and I will quote from a question on notice in June 2010:
… there has never been any evidence to say that the data collection processes have ever been doctored or tampered with to deliver some unknown benefit.
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