Page 2808 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 12 August 2015
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What could he be talking about there? Perhaps it is the walk-in centre where the staff told the government, “Do not put it at the Canberra Hospital,” but they did so regardless.
The problem with this, of course, is that ultimately this means that patients are not being treated as well as they could, that staff are in a stressed environment, and, as Dr Hall said, that you massively increase costs. Indeed, the reporting from the Canberra Times is that the Canberra Hospital is the most expensive in Australia according to the National Health Performance Authority. Average cost of care for an acute patient in the Canberra Hospital was $6,500, which was 76 per cent higher than the best performing metropolitan hospitals in Australia. Certainly we have done that research.
My office have compared the costs of running all the hospitals and we have looked at this. If we could get down to an average cost, we are talking about tens of millions of dollars if not hundreds of millions of dollars that could be saved in our health system and be reinvested in health. If we could manage those costs, we would not need to be in a position where the minister is cutting 60 beds from the planned University of Canberra hospital.
Of course all of this combines. None of this is in isolation. But what we know is that within that system as well is this toxic culture. It is so toxic that there is no accreditation in urology. It is so toxic that accreditation is only temporary in obstetrics. And it is so toxic that this minister has instigated a review of culture at the hospital. It has reached a pressure cooker point where the minister has had to instigate that review because of the amount of toxic culture and the areas of this hospital that are not getting accredited as a result.
I hope that we see that review. I hope that we see that report. And I hope that the minister can perhaps reference that in his speech, because, indeed, we need to know what is going on. We hear from the nurses, we hear from the doctors, we hear from the royal colleges, but there is this assurance from this government that this is being dealt with. But it is all buried. We remember this, I am sure, when we recall back in 2010 the bullying in obstetrics and how that was all buried as well.
With regard to the money—of course every cent counts—there was a damning report under this minister about data, about the management of data. We know that we have had problems in this hospital before with the management of data where the former minister’s close friend was doctoring the data because, as she said, of the political imperative and because of the fear that she felt.
But again, stemming from that issue, there was a review of data more broadly done across the hospital system by the Auditor-General. She found that there was about $3 million that had been lost, had not been accounted for. It was just waved away by this government. They just said, “It’s not a great amount of money; it’s only $3 million.” What can you get with $3 million in this health system? What sort of blase attitude is it that $3 million is just seen as loose change within the health system?
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