Libs’ waiting wish list

By Rebecca Fraser
NARRE Warren South Liberal candidate Michael Shepherdson has called on Victorian Health Minister Bronwyn Pike to “come clean” and reveal the number of people waiting for elective surgery at Casey Hospital.
Mr Shepherdson said in the hospital’s first 286 days of operation, the new Casey Hospital added almost 1000 patients to Victoria’s elective surgery waiting list, which continues to expand, despite the Bracks Government’s promises to reduce hospital waiting times.
He said based on the January-June 2005 Your Hospitals report, the Casey Hospital waiting list grew by 3.6 patients a day, or 25 patients a week, in its first 286 days.
Mr Shepherdson said that the hospital was opened in October last year and the waiting list was already up to 962 people by 30 June, 2005.
“If the waiting list has continued to grow at this rate over the last five months, it could stand at around 1500 today.”
Mr Shepherdson also called on Ms Pike to release the ambulance-bypass figures and the Hospital Early Warning System figures for Casey Hospital so people in Melbourne’s south-east could see the number of times ambulances have been diverted to other hospitals in the first 12 months of operation.
“Having almost 1000 elective surgery patients on the waiting list after just 286 days is an outrage, even more so if today there are nearly 1500 people waiting in pain and discomfort.
“Labor has not fixed Victoria’s hospital system as it promised and Steve Bracks and Bronwyn Pike know this. They have broken their election promise and now are fudging hospital figures, refusing to release key statistics and changing the reporting of hospital data to make scrutiny and comparisons with past performance difficult,” he said.
However, Southern Health, who operate Casey Hospital, said they had inherited waiting lists from other hospitals.
Casey Hospital patient access and demand director Lesley Dwyer said the hospital provided an invaluable, local hospital service to the growing community living in Melbourne’s outer south-east.
“Since it opened in October 2004, more than 5000 elective surgery patients have been removed from the waiting list, more than 400 babies have been delivered and more than 16,000 people have presented to its emergency department,” Mr Dwyer said.
“When it was established, it was intended that the hospital would not take on a new waiting list, but rather would inherit a waiting list from nearby hospitals that it aimed to reduce over time. This reduction would mean that patients already on a waiting list could be seen sooner at Casey.
“As of this financial year, the hospital is running at full surgical capacity. The full impact of this operation is expected to be felt in the next year, when elective-surgery waiting lists at other hospitals will be reduced. Casey Hospital is also on track to reach a waiting-list target of 700, as determined by the Department of Human Services, by the end of this financial year,” she said.
A spokesperson for Ms Pike did not respond to queries from the News in time for print.