Jillian Skinner MPMember for North Shore |
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Tuesday 25 March 2008
The Iemma Government and Health Minister Reba Meagher continue to deny manipulating emergency waiting time data despite mounting evidence pointing to systemic doctoring of official figures, Shadow Minister for Health Jillian Skinner said today.
“I commend the brave clinicians who are coming forward and exposing this deceitful Iemma Government practice of manipulating emergency waiting list data,” Mrs Skinner said.
“Clinicians are coming forward with stories of how bureaucrats are manipulating figures so the Iemma Government can cover-up the real problems in our emergency departments,” she said.
“If the Iemma Government have nothing to hide, they’d immediately release the results of the internal audit completed last year into waiting time manipulation within the Northern Sydney Central Coast Area Health Service.
“A previous internal audit by the Health Department in 2003 found five hospitals (St George, Bankstown, Prince of Wales, Sydney and the Sydney Eye Hospital) had been manipulating waiting list data.
“It is suspicious that Mr Iemma and Health Minister Reba Meagher are refusing to release copies of the latest audit reports.
“We support the move to publish more performance measures on NSW public hospitals because patients and the public deserve to have access to accurate, up-to-date, comprehensive and worthwhile information about their hospital system
“This issue was raised in 2003 and it appears as though the Iemma Government is continuing to manipulate emergency waiting time figures.
“Health Minister Reba Meagher must stop hiding behind her bureaucrats and explain why clinicians are being pressured to manipulate data simply to enhance the Iemma Government’s political standing,” Mrs Skinner said.