Page 3525 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 18 September 2019
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territory-wide planning to ensure the most efficient and effective use of services across the system, and working with New South Wales—although that is not in the budget—to better integrate services across the region to ensure patients can get the care they need as close to home as possible.
Another very good news story from the quarterly performance report is the performance of our nurse-led walk-in centres, which have proven to be extremely popular with Canberrans and which we know, of course, the Canberra Liberals oppose. Presentations were up eight per cent to 16,900 for the quarter, and that is 39 per cent more than for the same quarter last year. That can be partially attributed to the Gungahlin walk-in centre opening in September 2018, but we also saw increases in presentations in Belconnen and Tuggeranong. We have new walk-in centres opening in Weston Creek by the end of 2019 and in the inner north in late 2020. This is reflecting what we are hearing from Canberrans—that they want to receive care in a timely way, close to home, and they are embracing the nurse-led walk-in centres.
Of course, the report does contain data about emergency, which is not where we would want it to be. Emergency waiting times are not where we would want them to be. I was very clear about that in talking with the media about the report on Friday. But I do think it is important to recognise that, as I said yesterday in question time, comparing the performance of ACT health services to whole jurisdiction performance of other states and territories is not an apples with apples comparison, because our system does not just treat ACT residents; it treats the sickest people from the surrounding region.
Canberra Hospital has one of the busiest emergency departments in the country, and its actual peers are all facing the same challenges, with more and sicker patients. As I mentioned yesterday in question time, the data from 2018-19 demonstrates this. During 2018-19 there was an approximately eight per cent increase in resuscitation category patients, a more than nine per cent increase in emergency category patients, a four per cent increase in urgent category patients, which is the largest cohort of patients arriving at emergency departments, and an actual reduction in semi-urgent and non-urgent patients.
The 10 per cent reduction in non-urgent patients potentially speaks to the fact that Canberrans are understanding that they have the alternative of a nurse-led walk-in centre. Part of the strategy in managing emergency department demand that Canberra Health Services has employed is to remind Canberrans to only come to emergency when it is an emergency and that there are other alternative options available.
Mrs Dunne touched on the fact that we talk, in relation to emergency department performance, about the flu season coming early, and it is undeniable that the flu season did come early this year. Presentations across the system for emergency were up three per cent from the previous quarter, to more than 38,000 for the quarter.
Mrs Dunne is not correct to imply that nothing was done about this prior to 11 July. A number of measures to support seasonal demand were indeed implemented prior to 11 July. These included the introduction of strategies to improve discharge planning, removing barriers to discharge, including access to pathology rapid testing to enable
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