Tuesday, 12 November 2024

Health services

Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (19:10): (1271) My adjournment matter this evening is for the attention of the Minister for Health. Last week the quarterly figures finally were released by the government, the Victorian Agency for Health Information data, which is done every quarter, and they show that there is an ongoing crisis within the health system. Three out of 10 patients who presented to public hospital emergency departments were not treated within the recommended time. Planned surgery waiting lists are up 7 per cent, yet 9881 patients were removed from planned surgery waiting lists. Category 2 patients are currently waiting on average an extra 205 days for surgery, while category 3 patients are waiting an extra 340 days. Just 10.5 per cent of adults were transferred from an emergency department to a bed within 8 hours in some hospitals, and patients waiting for urgent dental care are waiting on average nearly an additional month compared to last quarter.

For the fifth quarter in a row the government has failed to report on the high and low risks of dental care in children, and they should be urgent priorities. Children should be urgent, because if you do not address those dental needs in children, the dysfunction, the damage and the ongoing pain and infection from dental caries and related symptoms can cause real distress for young people. It is incredibly important that they are dealt with. The Dental Health Services Victoria statement of priorities 2022–‍23 states that the statewide target waiting time for general care in dental care is 23 months. Twenty-three months is too long to wait for care, and that does not include the time people are required to wait to put their name back on a waiting list. After a course of general care they might get a treatment plan. They are then deemed to be non-priority patients and they are put back on a waitlist, so their actual treatment is extended even further. They are on the bottom of the waiting list, adding an extra 12 months of waiting time which is not counted in the official statistics.

I am raising these issues because the government are out there spruiking that they are improving the health outcomes for Victorians. They just are not. It is clear that the situation is deteriorating further. There is real concern amongst health services, particularly those that are working in the area of dental care. The question I have for the minister is, as has been posed by the Australian Dental Association’s Victorian branch: why does the government set wait-time targets that are clinically unacceptable, meaning people are waiting longer? They are put on the bottom of waitlists – they are extended waitlists – and they would like that question answered.