Hospitals off Target for Improving Timely Care in Elective Surgery and Emergency Departments

In its inaugural report on The Council of Australian Government’s (COAG) National Partnership on Improving Public Hospital’s the COAG Reform Council has found  no state or territory has met all targets for improving timely care in elective surgery and emergency departments.
The $3.3 billion project has achieved mixed results with only the ACT meeting all nine elective surgery targets in the agreement, and Western Australia being the only state to achieve its emergency department targets.
Chairman, the Hon John Brumby said in some cases states and territories came very close.
“Although some of the targets have only been partially achieved or not achieved at all, there was still some good performance from governments," Mr Brumby said. “With four years left under this agreement, there is still time for governments to achieve the goal of timely emergency department care and elective surgery for all Australians. “With next year’s report we will be able to see if the performance of governments improves.”
Mr Brumby said that governments are facing big challenges to meet the community’s high expectations for our health system. “These findings coupled with those in our recent report on the National Healthcare Agreement show that governments are taking steps to improve our health system, but they have their work cut out for them,” Mr Brumby said. “We have an increasing chronic disease burden, a growing and ageing population, and rising costs of services and health technologies—all factors that challenge governments in achieving targets under this National Partnership Agreement.”
Minister for Health Tanya Plibersek said the report does show improvements.
“It tells us that we've achieved well in some areas. “For example, in 2012 there are 90,000 more elective surgeries than there were in 2007 when we started this process of health reform.  “So, that’s 90,000 extra surgeries between 2007 and 2012.
“Another area to look at is the number of people who turned up to emergency and the waiting times that they're experiencing. “Between 2007 and 2012, the number of people turning up to emergency departments in hospital has increased by a million, from 5.5 million people turning up in 2007 to 6.5 million people turning up in 2012, and those people are being seen in a faster time frame than they were in 2007. “So, despite the very significant growth in the number of people being seen in emergency, we're also seeing progress towards meeting our target of people being seen, discharged or transferred within four hours.”
The council’s report assesses governments’ performance against elective surgery and emergency department targets. The elective surgery targets are for the proportion of patients seen within clinically recommended times, and for reducing average waiting periods that go over those times. Governments are also required to ensure that the 10 per cent of people who have waited the longest beyond the recommended time are seen within a year.
The emergency department targets are that patients must be admitted to hospital, referred on or discharged within four hours—all states and territories have agreed to achieve 90 per cent by 2015.
Under the agreement, reward payments of up to $400 million are available to states and territories between 2012–13 and 2016–17, subject to the council’s reports to COAG. The allocation of reward funding is at the discretion of the Commonwealth