Page 3966 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 25 November 2014
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Mr Hanson: Madam Speaker, on a point of order on relevance, the question was about what the minister is doing to address certain specific concerns that have been raised by patients. The question was not about politics, me or the role of the opposition. I ask that the minister be directly relevant and advise the Assembly what she is doing with the complaints and the reports that have been raised with her.
MADAM SPEAKER: Could you stop the clock, please. I have to uphold the point of order. I was also going to ask the Chief Minister to not engage Mr Hanson across the chamber but to address her comments through the chair. Could you be relevant to the question, Chief Minister: what are you doing to address the specific complaints?
MS GALLAGHER: Thank you, Madam Speaker. I look forward to updating the Assembly very shortly on those matters.
MADAM SPEAKER: A supplementary question, Ms Lawder.
MS LAWDER: Minister, do you maintain that the quality of care for those people mentioned in the previous cases by Mr Hanson was very high on every measure?
MS GALLAGHER: I think I have answered this. I have acknowledged that there will be complaints about the health system. Find me a health system anywhere in the country where there are not complaints about care. I get them from every hospital in this city. Every single hospital in this city, I get complaints over—public, private, all of them.
I also get a lot of compliments about the system. At a general level, as a rule, the quality of care is extraordinarily high. There are instances where it is not as good as it should be, and where it is not you have to front up, acknowledge that and put in place processes to ensure that those incidents do not occur again. But you have also got to accept that there are two sides to every story, and at the moment the only side being offered is one side and it is not always providing the complete picture.
MADAM SPEAKER: A supplementary question, Ms Berry.
MS BERRY: Minister, when complaints are received, how thoroughly are they investigated?
MS GALLAGHER: There is a patient feedback unit within the hospital, not just at Canberra Hospital but at Calvary Public Hospital as well. When concerns are raised, they contact the people relatively quickly. If it is very serious they will do it immediately. They go through a process of identifying and responding to every single issue that is raised. Some of them can be resolved very quickly. Others will take more litigious action and that extends the nature of the complaints. There is very well-established feedback. The forms are available online. People have them handed out at the bedside. The patient feedback unit will come and visit people in the hospital.
When I talk to Dr Brown about how we deal with complaints in the hospital, the best thing people can do, whilst they are there and they have their concerns, is raise that and have people attend to those concerns there. I know that some people choose to wait till afterwards—sometimes months after they have been in the hospital—to raise
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