Page 3520 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 18 September 2019
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There is an average. It is reported regularly. It is reported in the quarterly reports. The figure is 28 per cent. That is a concern, compared to a target of 75 per cent.
Ms Stephen-Smith interjecting—
MRS DUNNE: I understand that Ms Stephen-Smith is very touchy about these things, and she should be. She is the last in a failed line of health ministers who have promised the people of the ACT improved emergency department waiting times. I was thinking about this today. I was thinking back to 2012. We found that when we could not fix the emergency department waiting times, they fixed the figures.
Then we had Minister Fitzharris in here on, I think, five successive occasions telling the Assembly that figures that she had showed that emergency department waiting times were heading in the right direction. When the figures were finally published, that was proved to be false. I cannot go back and challenge Minister Fitzharris for misleading the Assembly, which she clearly did. I cannot go back and do that. When I asked her on a number of occasions whether she had misled the Assembly, she insisted that she had not. But the figures contradict what she said.
This government and this minister are very sensitive, and they should be. The figures that came out last week show that we are in a parlous state. We are also under target when it comes to emergency and semi-urgent categories. It is worth going through these triage categories. Category 1 is for resuscitation, when the patient is not breathing and must be treated immediately. We perform according to target, and 100 per cent of people who proceed to accident and emergency in category 1 are treated on time.
Category 2 is emergency. Examples of category 2 are a patient who has had a stroke, an acute respiratory problem or an epileptic seizure; who has a condition like meningitis or severe sepsis; or who is experiencing acute psychosis. Patients in this category should be treated within 10 minutes. We have a target of treating 80 per cent of people within that time, and we fail to achieve it. Last year it was 74 per cent, which was a decline from the previous year, at 77 per cent.
Category 3 is urgent. Patients in category 3 have a potentially life-threatening issue, such as a serious issue, and are in severe pain. It is simply not good enough that only slightly more than 30 per cent of patients in this category are being seen within clinically recommended times of half an hour. We have a target of 75 per cent of patients being seen within the clinically appropriate time of half an hour, but last year only 32 per cent were seen in a clinically appropriate time, compared to 37 per cent the year before.
Category 4 is semi-urgent or potentially serious. It is recommended that people in this category are treated within an hour. Conditions in this category include migraines, foreign matter in the eye, earaches and sprained ankles. We have a target of 70 per cent. In this category, last year we saw 48 per cent of people, compared to the figure for the previous year of 48 per cent. The last category is non-urgent. There is a target of seeing 70 per cent of people within two hours in the non-urgent category.
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