Page 3779 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 28 October 2015
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Minister Corbell has been Minister for Health for about nine months and was a minister before. He should be well able to address a number of these issues. I will go through them. One that we have raised before relates to the real concerns about the culture of the health system. We have raised this issue consistently. This became an issue of significance in 2010 with the bullying in obstetrics. We have seen it in neurology, we have seen it in the women and children’s hospital, we have seen it in ED and we have seen it across elements of the hospital. Let me quote from a media release from the minister lest you think that this is not a problem:
The comprehensive review released today examined the structure, governance, leadership and interpersonal relationships and behaviours of doctors at Canberra Hospital, which revealed behaviour that was in some cases, inconsistent with ACT Health’s organisational policies and expected behaviours. … It is deeply disappointing to find that poor behaviours such as bullying, inappropriate interpersonal relationships and emotional intimidation have been allowed to persist for so long among some senior staff within our largest and most important health teaching facility.
It goes on:
Even more concerning is that these behaviours were prolonged and normalised, and that some junior staff feel they are not sufficiently empowered to speak up, nor that there were appropriate mechanisms in place for them to do so.
That is just shocking, and it is on the back of so many assurances that we have had that these issues are being addressed. There is a problem with the culture. Mr Corbell is not denying that; he is putting out press releases saying it is systemic. So it is not the opposition making wild allegations; it is the minister saying that this is a chronic problem.
We then have the minister’s own strategic indicator report that has been released—this is the annual report—where we can turn to a range of indicators that show some pretty appalling results. The number of patients waiting longer than the recommended time frames for elective surgery is the highest in four years. It is going up significantly. In emergency departments, again, we are seeing some real problems there. In the ED, triage categories to be treated within clinically recommended times are way below satisfactory targets.
We can look at the comparison between the various hospitals as well. We can look at the Canberra Hospital. For category 3, which is the urgent category—patients that are meant to be seen within 30 minutes—only 39 per cent of patients are being seen within the time frame against a target of 75 per cent. I do not remember, I would have to say, a target that had a result with a ‘3’ in front of it, where we are in the 30s. The minister may recall one but I certainly do not. It has been pretty bad, and I have seen figures in the 40s, but when we have now got only 39 per cent of people being seen on time—these are all deteriorations in the figures—that is a real problem.
I think there is a crisis in our ED, and there has been for a while. You can look at the evidence that came out from the data doctoring, a lot of the comments made by
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