Through our $76 million commitment for additional elective surgeries the Hodgman Liberal Government has delivered treatment to all children who were left who had waited over the recommended time.
Labor didn’t want to see this happen. Here are their own words opposing the $76 million for elective surgeries:
“The Liberals should get their priorities right, put a freeze on their election spending promises and ensure community services are adequately funded.” – Rebecca White media release, 27 November 2014.
We did not put a freeze on our commitment to additional elective surgeries as Ms White requested. Instead, we have treated 800 people who otherwise would have stayed on the waiting list.
We have deliberately targeted the complex cases that under the previous Labor-Green government were put in the too-hard basket. Under the previous government patients with cases which were complex and took more time, more resources and more money were left on waiting lists for unacceptable times.
As well as children who had waited over the recommended time, we have also targeted in the first year of our commitment over-boundary urgent adult patients and some of the state’s longest waiting patients.
As a result, over the past year the average waiting time for Category 3 patients has fallen from 531 days to 325 days.
Over the coming three years, we will continue to roll out the remainder of our $76 million in funding for additional surgeries, as well as fixing the broken health system so that elective surgeries aren’t postponed and cancelled because of emergency surgeries.
Our health reforms are critical if we are to turn around Tasmania’s unacceptable performance on health outcomes. Only Bryan Green and Labor, with their desperation to play politics on health reform, want to keep the broken and fragmented health system we have now.
Michael Ferguson, Minister for Health
