Page 3519 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 18 September 2019

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That this Assembly:

(1) notes the important services provided by staff at the Canberra Hospital (TCH) and Health Services to the people of Canberra and the region;

(2) further notes that, in relation to Canberra’s emergency departments:

(a) people waited longer in the fourth quarter of 2018-19 to receive treatment within the clinically recommended timeframe in the emergency, urgent and semi-urgent triage categories;

(b) the median waiting time for patients in the urgent, semi-urgent and non-urgent categories increased in the fourth quarter of 2018-19;

(d) the median waiting time for patients in the urgent category is longer than the median waiting time in the non-urgent category;

(e) that the winter beds strategy was not put in place at TCH until 11 July 2019 when the flu season had started in May;

(f) that 61 per cent of the infrastructure at the Calvary Hospital is nearing the end of its useful life; and

(g) that the Government has been aware of the infrastructure problems at TCH for a decade and has failed to act; and

(3) calls on the Minister for Health to report to the Legislative Assembly by the last sitting day of 2019, on the:

(a) progress on the Surgical Procedures, Interventional Radiology and Emergency project and its likely cost;

(b) progress in developing other significant health infrastructure programs such as plans to upgrade infrastructure at Bruce; and

Two years ago Minister Fitzharris told the Assembly that emergency department waiting times were coming down. Repeatedly she told us that she had seen figures that showed that emergency department waiting times were, in her words, heading in the right direction. We know now that that was not the case. We know now that waiting times in our EDs are not coming down. They are, in fact, going up. It is one more factor that shows that the people of the ACT cannot trust the Barr government to tell them what is happening in health or to manage the health system.

Only 28 per cent of people who presented to our emergency departments in the last quarter were seen within the clinically recommended time frame. This compared to a target of 75 per cent. Yesterday in this place, when the minister was asked that question, she could not answer it. She could not answer the question. She had all the time in question time to answer the questions or afterwards to correct the record and tell us anything she liked, but yesterday, when she was asked for the average waiting time and the number of people seen within the clinically recommended time, she did not answer the question. She told us what the clinical times were for each category.

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