Page 2566 - Week 08 - Thursday, 14 August 2014
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There is also very significant improvement in elective surgery, and this needs to be recognised by this place. It is not fair for politicians just for some sort of political point scoring to come in here and not acknowledge the work done, not by me but by those surgeons and the support staff at the hospital, and focus on people who are waiting too long for care. We have seen those numbers dramatically reduce over the last three years.
This is people’s day in, day out task. This is what they focus on at the hospital, to make sure we are seeing more people, that they are being seen in the time that is clinically recommended. The results are clearly there to be shown. But for people not to acknowledge that, regardless of what side of the political fence they sit on, is disrespectful to the amount of effort that has gone in, again not by me but by others.
We can see from the quarterly performance report the amount of surgery that is being delivered, over 11,000 operations being delivered. The increase in the access to elective surgery had a very significant impact on the numbers of people waiting for elective surgery and the numbers waiting too long for care.
At the end of March there were 3,980 patients on the elective waiting list. When compared to March 2010, there has been a 29 per cent decrease. ACT public hospitals have also significantly reduced the amount of people waiting longer than recommended for their care, with a result of 737 long-wait patients at the end of the nine months. This has resulted in a 20 per cent reduction in the number of long waits in just 12 months, and a 71 per cent reduction since 2010. They are the statistics that I know were selectively, I guess, glossed over or not even acknowledged in the Leader of the Opposition’s address to the Assembly today. But there will continue to be areas of pressure in the hospital, and those two are key areas which attract the most interest.
I guess I should take some comfort from the fact that Mr Hanson continues to roll out a speech he has been giving for the last four years with no new information other than harping on the old election lines they had in 2012. Meanwhile we get on and run a high-quality, very responsive health service that people in Canberra rate very highly, and that is what we will continue to do. The vast majority of that $1.39 billion is not spent on elective surgery or emergency departments. The vast majority of that is spent in community health, in other activities of the hospital, in our cancer services, in our women’s, children’s and youth services, in our mental health services. The health system is much bigger than just elective surgery and emergency departments.
When good work is done and results are delivered, they should be acknowledged by this place, and I will acknowledge them for as long as I am in this place, because I see day in, day out how hard those people work to deliver those results. Just occasionally they deserve a pat on the back for it.
Proposed expenditure agreed to.
Housing ACT—
Schedule 1, Part 1.13—$1,671,500 (net cost of outputs), $200,000 (capital injection), totalling $1,871,500.
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