Ms CARNEY - 2005-03-23
There are now 1600 people on the waiting list for elective surgery in Alice Springs. When you were censured in June last year, you responded by saying: ‘It is a great time for health in the Northern Territory’. Will you meet with some of those 1600 people on that waiting list - those waiting for their hip replacements, knee operations, eye operations and so on - and tell them that it is a ‘great time for health in Alice Springs’?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I am not that sort of doctor. My job is to make sure that the hospital is resourced to carry out, amongst other things, elective surgery. In what is a real coup for a regional hospital in a town the size of Alice Springs, we are very fortunate to have two highly-qualified Australian accredited anaesthetists. We now have two full-time surgeons who can work with those anaesthetists to keep surgery flowing in the hospital, and we have the nursing staff up to establishment to support the elective surgery program.
Elective surgery has commenced in the hospital. We certainly want to make inroads as quickly as possible on the waiting lists for going into that hospital. The only thing beyond my control is that surgery in emergency circumstances has to take precedence over elective surgery. We will fit it around the demand for emergency surgery and will make inroads on that list.
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I am not that sort of doctor. My job is to make sure that the hospital is resourced to carry out, amongst other things, elective surgery. In what is a real coup for a regional hospital in a town the size of Alice Springs, we are very fortunate to have two highly-qualified Australian accredited anaesthetists. We now have two full-time surgeons who can work with those anaesthetists to keep surgery flowing in the hospital, and we have the nursing staff up to establishment to support the elective surgery program.
Elective surgery has commenced in the hospital. We certainly want to make inroads as quickly as possible on the waiting lists for going into that hospital. The only thing beyond my control is that surgery in emergency circumstances has to take precedence over elective surgery. We will fit it around the demand for emergency surgery and will make inroads on that list.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016