Page 1991 - Week 07 - Thursday, 13 August 2020
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when it comes to elective surgery. It is not due to COVID-19. It is not, as I heard the Chief Minister try to claim the other day, because there has been underinvestment in New South Wales in hospital infrastructure. It is due entirely to Labor’s poor management of the health portfolio. The problems with elective surgery waiting lists are not the fault of our dedicated surgeons, doctors, nurses, health professionals and hospital staff. It is a problem that is due to mismanagement by Andrew Barr and the succession of health ministers since the beginning of 2015, including Mr Corbell, Ms Fitzharris and Ms Stephen-Smith.
The ACT Health Directorate has developed an elective surgery plan where routine non-tertiary services are removed from the Canberra Hospital to allow Canberra Health Services to concentrate on delivering emergency, trauma and tertiary level services. This means that most elective surgery is being performed at the Calvary Hospital and at private hospitals. This is mainly brought about because the Canberra Hospital does not have enough beds to support an elective surgery strategy as well as the growing demand for trauma, emergency and tertiary level services.
As we heard in question time today, in 2011 the then health minister, Katy Gallagher, started a consultation process to add 400 beds. She released a discussion paper which stated:
The existing ACT public health care system is at capacity and needs to expand to meet future health demand created by an ageing and growing population, changing technology and consumer expectations … The pressure on acute beds will continue with projections estimating a 50 per cent increase in admissions up to 2022.
In question time today, the health minister admitted that so far we have seen since that time a 35 per cent increase in admissions, so we are well on track to meeting Katy Gallagher’s estimated 50 per cent increase in admissions.
The Barr Labor government has abandoned the plan for 400 new beds. Instead, the plan has been to bed-manage the increased demand. If you look at the quarterly performance reports, the annual reports or the Productivity Commission’s reports on government services, you will see that the Barr government’s bed management strategy is seen to be a failure.
The Barr government have failed to provide the beds they knew they needed. This means that the Canberra Hospital does not have the ability to perform elective surgery to meet a significant part of the demand, meaning that most elective surgery is now done in the private hospitals, and almost all of the orthopaedic surgery is done in the private hospitals.
We know that elective surgery waitlists have got worse due to COVID-19. There is a COVID-19 impact. Canberra Health Services have advised that 2,250 surgeries have been cancelled during the fourth quarter of 2019-20. This is directly because of the halt to elective surgery that was announced in late March as we were preparing for the pandemic.
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