Page 3782 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 28 October 2015
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(c) the ACT Government is addressing increased demand on the Emergency Department by providing a $23 million expansion that will deliver a further 1000 square metres of floor space and up to 21 additional beds, including acute beds, resuscitation beds/bays, Emergency Management Unit beds, Mental Health Assessment Unit beds and the paediatric streaming function;
(d) the ACT Government is improving access to elective surgery by providing $14.8 million over two years to provide an extra 500 elective surgeries and an additional 500 endoscopy cases;
(e) the ACT Government, in recognition of the seriousness of the negative impact that bullying and harassment has on staff and workplace practice, commissioned in June 2015 an independent review of the clinical training culture at The Canberra Hospital and health services;
(f) the ACT Government is a leader in its approach to tackling the national cultural issues associated with medical training by publicly releasing the review and establishing a committee that will implement all of the recommendations in the report;
(g) that ACT Health's new director-general has publicly stated she will not tolerate bullying in the medical workforce;
(h) a full survey of ACT Health services, against the 256 actions within the National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards, conducted by 10 surveyors, resulted in unconditional accreditation with no exclusions; and
(i) the ACT Government remains committed to further improving the health system and responding to the needs of staff and patients alike.”.
It is disappointing that the Canberra Liberals continue to present such a poor impression of our health system, given that it provides a very high level of care and treatment to many thousands of Canberrans and people in the surrounding region every year. Every day, our primary hospital, Canberra Hospital, is providing lifesaving care and treatment to our community. Staff within the hospital are making a difference in people’s lives every day by providing highly specialised care, despite significant increases in levels of activity and demand.
As a jurisdiction we run an extremely busy health system. Every day we are providing greater levels of care on a more frequent basis to residents of our city and in the surrounding region. For example, our ED saw 130,000 people present for care last financial year. This equates to almost 360 people every day looking for emergency care. This alone is an increase of around 15 people every day from just 12 months ago. Despite this, we have managed to meet the increase in demand while still maintaining a “did not wait rate” of 5.2 per cent across two years. This reflects the continuation of our effort to see and treat people in the timeliest manner possible.
Mr Hanson highlights his concerns about performance in our emergency department. But it is worth highlighting that despite all these increases in activity, we have still managed over the last two years to improve—that is right, improve—the proportion of
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