HOSPITALS
— EMERGENCY DEPARTMENTS — PRESENTATIONS
200. Ms L. METTAM to the Minister for Health:
I
have a supplementary question. Presentations in December 2020 were not 100 000;
they were 92 000. Mental health presentations make up only 10 to 15 per
cent —
The SPEAKER: Member, I think
only yesterday I reminded you not to make a statement at the start of your supplementary. If you continue to do it in the
future, I will sit you down and you will not get to ask a supplementary.
If you could just get to the question, please.
Ms L. METTAM: The minister
has been Minister for Health for four years. Given the consistent trends in
presentations at current levels before COVID, why were preparations not in
place for this return to normal activity?
Mr R.H.
COOK replied:
It
is not a return to normal; it is a new normal. That is the point I am trying to
make, member. None of us could have predicted the global pandemic and
the implications it would have for our health system. I repeat: December 2020
was the busiest month ever in our emergency departments, with 104 000
presentations. That is a significant number of patients, up from 87 000 in July
2020. We are seeing a significant increase.
I might remind the chamber that our
EDs are the best performing in the country. The Productivity Commission report
showed that Western Australia's EDs were the best performing EDs in the
nation. That is a record that I am very
proud of. We had consistently higher performance in relation to the four-hour
rule than any other ED in the country. We had a four-hour rule percentage of
about 71 per cent compared with the national average of 69 per cent. I am
very pleased to say that it has continued to hold fairly high for this period.
There is no doubt that we are under pressure
and that that is having an impact upon things such as elective surgery. On the
subject of elective surgery, the Report
on government services showed
that we have the second-lowest median wait time for elective surgery of any
state in the country. We are coming off a position of strength. That is the
record, as the member alludes to, of my four years as Minister for Health. It
is a record I am very proud of. It is a record of a government that wants to
put patients first. It is a record of the government that invests over $10
billion a year in our health system. It is a record that we are very proud of
because we have some of the best doctors, nurses, allied health and support
staff working in our system. We stand by the great work they do because they
create a world-class health system.