Page 635 - Week 02 - Thursday, 20 February 2020
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We need to put the walk-in centres in context. If somebody turns up with a cold, normally that is something that you should treat yourself at home. You should not cause the ACT taxpayer to pay $160 for a service which, under normal circumstances, you would treat at home.
It is interesting that the list includes bruises and the like. Often the advice would be to go home and put a cold compress on it—kerching! $160 to the ACT taxpayer. I am very glad, for instance, that tetanus injections are provided at the service, because presumably the service deals with wounds and puncture injuries, and the obvious concomitant of a puncture injury is to have a tetanus needle.
With other things, it beggars belief that the walk-in centres do not deal with them. Why are there no vaccination services provided? Especially with cold and flu vaccinations in the flu season, why are we not encouraging people to attend nurse-led walk-in centres, where there are highly trained nurse practitioners? Doing immunisations is an important part of their training. It would be important to have that as another element of the public health service available to the people of the ACT.
Ms Stephen-Smith interjecting—
MRS DUNNE: The minister will have her turn, Madam Assistant Speaker, and I am sure that I can predict now all of the things that she will say. I think we should look at the issue of the importance of immediate care for people when they need it.
The half-yearly report that we touched on in question time today shows that the government is failing to provide timely care to people when they need it. This report shows that only 38 per cent of people who present to the Canberra Hospital emergency department will be seen within the clinically recommended time frame, which is a substantial fall over the years. At the turn of the century and a little later, approaching 75 per cent of people were seen in a timely fashion. If you required urgent treatment, Madam Assistant Speaker, there was only one chance in five over the last six months that you would receive that treatment on time.
The claim is that walk-in centres have relieved pressure on emergency departments. Overall the statistics for timeliness in our emergency departments have declined markedly, even though we are being told that the nurse-led walk-in centres will provide immediate care when people need it.
Ten years ago, 62 per cent of people who presented to an emergency department were seen on time. Those figures were down from the turn of the century. This figure was before the nurse-led walk-in centres were introduced. This has fallen to 46 per cent in the last financial year and now 38 per cent in the first half of the 2019-20 financial year. Our performance in treating patients who present to the emergency department has fallen in the emergency category. It has plummeted for urgent patients and fallen significantly for semi-urgent patients. It has improved for people in category 5, the non-urgent category.
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