Page 243 - Week 01 - Thursday, 12 February 2015
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Firstly, our residents continue to enjoy the highest average life expectancy of anywhere in Australia: 81.7 years for males and 85 years for females. The territory continues to register excellent results in childhood vaccinations, with 93 per cent of all kids aged 12 to 15 months fully vaccinated—the highest rate reported nationally. We have seen the second consecutive growth period in participation rates for women aged 40 and over undertaking breast screening, increasing from 30.6 per cent during 2011-12 to 32.3 per cent during 2012-13.
The practice incentive program regarding diabetes incentives was reported for the first time, and it shows a large proportion of these practices within the ACT registered for the PIP diabetes initiative. The ACT figure of 57.7 per cent is well above the national average. It is great to see our GPs taking on this program.
ACT public hospitals have made very significant improvements in improving patients’ access to elective surgery within the clinically recommended time frames. We now have the lowest wait times for elective surgery since 2003 and we have met eight of the nine elective surgery targets for 2013. While there is still more work to be done, this is a very encouraging trend.
The ACT has maintained 100 per cent accreditation of all its public hospital beds, demonstrating our ongoing commitment by our staff to deliver a quality public healthcare system. We have the highest proportion of community follow-up for patients with a mental illness, following their discharge from hospital—73.9 per cent of mental health patients are followed up within seven days of leaving hospital, against a national average of only 60 per cent.
We have seen in the report highlights of the ACT as an exemplar for managing the use of seclusion during acute episodes of mental health inpatient care. Through alternative strategies and engagement with mental health consumers, the ACT has been able to significantly reduce our seclusion rates. Current data from the most recent reporting year shows the ACT has a seclusion rate of 0.9 events per 1,000 bed days compared to a national average of nearly 10 seclusion events per 1,000 bed days. The fact that we are using alternative strategies to ensure people do not have to be placed in seclusion is a good thing.
Our public hospitals have seen 125,890 emergency department presentations in the last reporting year. This is the highest number of annual presentations in the ACT on record, 12 per cent higher than those recorded just three years ago. The proportion of emergency time presentations with a length of stay of four hours or less during 2013-14 was 61.8 per cent. This rate is lower than the national average, but we have seen significant improvement—4.5 per cent improvement to the performance on this performance measure for the 2012-13 year. That is a good outcome; it shows our EDs are working hard to improve timely access to care.
There is further work to be done in reducing the number of patients waiting to be seen within the appropriate triage categories. This will remain a focus for me and the government in the coming year, and we will be pursuing a range of initiatives. I have mentioned the additional beds in our emergency department, the engagement of more
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