Page 2744 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 13 August 2019
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In addition, health data has been a long-running problem for this government. An answer to a question on notice revealed that it will cost $12.6 million to fix the problems with ACT Health data. This money should not have needed to be spent. It is money that could have been spent on upgrades to equipment, on infrastructure and on staff.
The ACT Auditor-General recently did an audit into ACT Health’s data upgrade. He found:
Planning for the implementation of the System-Wide Data Review program is not effective. There is neither transparency nor clarity about how and when the three-year program will be delivered …
Why is $12.6 million not fixing the problem? Why has the Auditor-General been so scathing in his review? How can the people of the ACT have confidence in the health data that will be released in the future? It is important for all. How can this Labor-Greens government plan for future health services when data is unreliable? How can people be guaranteed that when they turn up at accident and emergency they will have the doctor that they need to see if there is not sufficient data about the needs of ACT Health patients? What is this health minister’s plan to ensure that her directorate delivers on the system-wide health review? Other states are well ahead of us in using health data to develop health services plans. We are only just reaching the position where we can add the figures of hospital A to the figures for hospital B and get a reliable outcome.
We have several performance indicators in the budget that are being phased out. These indicators are based on Australian Institute of Health and Welfare measures and are comparable between jurisdictions. The government is replacing objective data with subjective data. Why can’t the people of the ACT see in their budget papers performance indicators that are rigorous and give a good indication of how well the government is doing in relevant areas? Why is the government so keen on hiding information? Why can’t the people of the ACT rely on the information that the government releases?
During estimates, the former minister stated that these performance indicators were being phased out because they were reported on by the AIHW. Perhaps the former Minister for Health and Wellbeing did not like the AIHW because they kept releasing reports that showed that the ACT was not performing well. The government should be using this data as a prompt to look at how it can perform better. It should not be swept under the carpet and we should not be looking at distraction. We should be looking for good health data that can be relied upon. At the moment, given what we have experienced since 2012 and the latest Auditor-General’s comments, I do not hold out much hope in that space.
Data is one of the things that has always been downplayed by successive ministers: “It is only data. No-one dies because of bad data.” Actually, people probably do have bad health outcomes if we do not have proper data. The issue with data is fundamental to health planning. Poor health planning has resulted in poor health outcomes, and these
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