Auditor-General exposes Labor’s health record
Queensland’s Auditor-General has today released a damning indictment of the Palaszczuk Labor Government’s health record, with a new report into Queensland Health’s performance.
Shocking results from the Queensland Audit Office Health 2022 report include:
- Paramedic lost hours soared by 20% to 134,155 hours.
- The number of patients waiting longer than clinically recommended for a specialist doctor has increased by 80% to around 104,000 patients.
- Between 1 July 2017 and 1 July 2022, the total number of patients waiting longer than recommended to see a specialist increased by 177%.
- The Palaszczuk Labor Government has not met state-wide Ambulance Ramping targets in the past 8 years.
- Despite spending $263 million of taxpayers’ money on its Care4QLD strategy, the Palaszczuk Labor Government failed to improve key performance measures such as ambulance response times, patient off-stretcher times and lost hours.
- The Palaszczuk Labor Government did not meet its response time performance targets for Code 1 ambulance call outs which are potentially life-threatening events that require the use of lights and sirens.
- Cyber security risks to Queensland Health prevail.
- New hospitals announced by the Palaszczuk Labor Government will likely be late and over-budget.
Leader of the Opposition David Crisafulli said the fact the Auditor-General needed to uncover the shocking performance of Queensland Health, demonstrated the urgent need for the State Government to start being open and transparent about the true state of the health crisis.
“Queenslanders deserve answers on what’s going wrong with their hospitals, they shouldn’t need to wait for the Auditor-General to reveal the true state of our health system,” Mr Crisafulli said.
“Queenslanders deserve to know when they call an ambulance in an emergency, that one will come.
“Queenslanders deserve to know they won’t be left laying on a driveway, waiting to get into an emergency department.
“Queenslanders deserve to know they can see a doctor, when they need to.”
Mr Crisafulli said the LNP team had put forward four key solutions to heal Queensland’s health crisis, that he urged the government to implement now, including:
- investing in more beds
- streamlining triaging
- sharing data in real-time
- putting doctors and nurses back in charge.
Shadow Minister for Health Ros Bates said the Auditor General’s report was yet another damning indictment of the Palaszczuk Labor Government’s deepening health crisis.
“When Queenslanders are losing their lives because ambulances can’t reach them in time, we know it is because the Palaszczuk Labor Government has failed to properly plan, run and resource the health system,” Ms Bates said.
“Our hospitals are at crisis point and emergency patients are being left in the driveway, unable to even get through the front door.
“Under the Minister’s watch, long waitlists for specialists have blown out by 80%, with patients in desperate need of specialist treatment left languishing.
“More than 100,000 Queenslanders are now waiting longer than clinically recommended to see a specialist doctor. This is the Health Ministers’ legacy.
“If Premier Palaszczuk wasn’t already so checked-out of doing her job, she would have already sacked the incompetent Health Minister Yvette D’Ath.
“As a nurse and former hospital administrator, this report shows our paramedics, doctors and nurses are doing an incredible job under a broken system.”
Auditor-General’s report can be downloaded here https://documents.parliament.qld.gov.au/tp/2023/5723T234-5B42.pdf
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