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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2008-04-09 Daily Xml
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HOSPITAL WAITING LISTS

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:59): My question is to the Minister for Health. Is the minister aware that the Department of Health in New South Wales has issued new guidelines on hospital waiting lists as a result of a finding of the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption in its 'Investigation into the alleged misreporting of hospital waiting list data' dated February 2004; and, if so, is the data published by our department at the same standard, including that published on the website?

The ICAC inquiry found that, although the practices in misreporting hospital waiting list data in New South Wales were not implemented in bad faith, it was of the opinion that the existing guidelines on hospital waiting lists needed to be substantially tightened to adequately reflect the importance attached to waiting list data as a performance indicator of the public health system. In particular, it stated:

Those guidelines were so loose and ambiguous that they not only created extensive opportunities for data to be artificially manipulated for personal or political purposes, but they also contributed to the making of allegations that improper practices had occurred when they had not.

Further, the commission recommended that the Department of Health introduce greater transparency in relation to the precise compilation of the official waiting list statistics.

The Hon. J.D. HILL (Kaurna—Minister for Health, Minister for the Southern Suburbs, Minister Assisting the Premier in the Arts) (15:00): I thank the member very much for her question because it highlights a point that the government has been making for a number of years. The comparisons of various states of the commonwealth one with the other in relation to these matters, as the opposition likes to make from time to time, is fraught with difficulties, because each state measures different kinds of things—they measure waiting times starting and finishing at different points in the continuum. I have argued in the past that we have a very good set of results in South Australia but, in comparison with states that have a sloppier recording system, we appear to be in a worse situation. I am grateful to the deputy leader for bringing that point to our attention, because it highlights the difficulty of comparing one state with another.

The second point I would make is that the new commonwealth government is very committed to ensuring that all the states publish data that is of the same rigour and standard, and that is something that I very strongly support. In fact, the new Prime Minister has made it clear that increased federal funding, which is something for which we have been arguing, will flow only if the states undertake to publish data on a true comparative basis. That is also something that I and the government of South Australia strongly support.

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