Page 1239 - Week 05 - Thursday, 4 June 2020
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Assembly, I can advise that the report has been almost concluded. It just needs cabinet’s sign-off and we will have it before the next sitting.
Leave of absence
Motion (by Mr Wall) agreed to:
That leave of absence be granted to Miss C Burch for today’s sitting due to illness.
Supplementary answer to question without notice
Health—air pollution
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: I am rising to provide some further information in relation to the question I was asked by Mrs Dunne about the difference between my response to question on notice 2921 and the information provided to the Canberra Times.
In response to a question from Mrs Dunne, which was:
(1) How many presentations to ACT emergency departments—
plural—
during (a) December 2019, (b) January 2020 and (c) February 2020 were attributable: (i) wholly to poor air quality or (ii) partly to poor air quality.
My response was:
(1) It is not possible to determine whether an Emergency Department (ED) presentation is wholly or partly attributable to air quality in our data holding …
The connection between an ED presentation and air quality can only be established on a case by case basis with review of patient’s files by clinical experts. An extensive clinical review would need to be undertaken by the relevant medical experts to determine if these presentations were in fact, due to some sort of poor air quality.
Canberra Health Services has been actively recording presentations to the ED that were and are smoke related as stated by the patient since 20 December 2019. However, this information is volunteered by the patient and not diagnosed by a medical professional and therefore this measure can only be seen as a patient reported indicator rather than a clinical indicator.
The information that was then reported subsequently by the ABC was from an internal document that said 166 patients identified their presentation as:
… smoke related. However, it is not possible to determine without clinical review and analysis by experts if each presentation to the ED was clinically due to exposure to smoke.
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