A YEAR ON: ELECTIVE SURGERY WAIT TIMES GET WORSE – TWICE THE NATIONAL AVERAGE
Despite ACT Health recently being accused of downgrading patients’ elective surgery classifications to improve elective surgery waiting lists, the latest national Health statistics from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare show ACT patients are still waiting the longest in the nation for important surgery, Shadow Minister for Health Jeremy Hanson said today.
The AIHW Australian hospital statistics 2008–09 report released today shows that waiting times for elective surgery in the ACT are getting longer and are more than twice the national average.
The median wait time has increased from 72 days to 75 days in the ACT despite the national average remaining static at 34 days from the same reported figures last year.
“The report is full of bad news for Katy Gallagher’s administration of the ACT health system, including statistics that our hospital system is second only to NT as the most inefficient in Australia,’ Mr Hanson said. “Add to this, waiting times for our emergency departments are still unacceptably long.
“Ms Gallagher’s excuse for appalling management of elective surgery median wait times is that her focus has been on addressing patients who have been waiting on the longest waiting times. Yet the report shows deterioration in the longer wait category (Days waited at the 90th percentile) from 372 days to 378 days in the ACT. Only Tasmania is worse in this category and we are well over the national average of 235 days.
“We have seen the human face of the lists with patients like Allan McFarlane who has been waiting over a year for prostate surgery (Canberra Times 10 June 2010) and David Wentworth who had his urgent surgery downgraded by ACT Health (Canberra Times 12 June 2010). Alan and David received attention after their cases were reported in the media. Otherwise they could still be languishing on a waiting list and left in the dark like so many other Canberran’s.
“Management by media is no way to manage a health system and today’s statistics demonstrate a comprehensive failure by Katy Gallagher to manage our health system,” Jeremy Hanson said.
17 June 2010
