Jillian Skinner MPMember for North Shore |
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Thursday 3 April 2008
Dr Tony O’Connell, NSW Health Director of Performance Improvement responding to reports manipulation of official hospital performance figures is widespread:
“There’s no evidence that this is widespread.” – AAP 24/3/08
It is an ‘outrageous claim’ – “There’s no evidence that I have that it has happened anywhere else.” SMH 25/3/08
“It’s really quite perverse.” SMH 25/3/08
“That’s nonsense” 2GB 25/3/08
After denying the doctoring of official performance figures in public hospitals was widespread last week, Health Minister Reba Meagher should come clean and reveal exactly how many hospitals are now under investigation for manipulating performance data, NSW Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell and Shadow Minister for Health Jillian Skinner said today.
“Last week Reba Meagher said Gosford Hospital was the only facility caught manipulating hospital figures, now at least a dozen hospitals are under investigation,” Mr O’Farrell said.
“Reports today confirm the Iemma Government and Minister for Health Reba Meagher have deliberately misled the public,” he said.
“The Health Minister has either been lying or is so incompetent she didn’t check just how many public hospitals are cooking the books to improve their performance figures.
“When Morris Iemma was Health Minister, the Auditor General found in 2003 that elective surgery waiting lists at five hospitals – Prince of Wales, Bankstown, St George, St Vincent's and Sydney hospitals – were all falsified.
“Despite an investigation five years ago that found hospitals were manipulating official performance data, the Iemma Government has failed to stamp it out.”
Mrs Skinner said the Iemma Government and Reba Meagher have been caught out.
“There must be an immediate independent examination of all hospital performance figures from someone like the Auditor General so the results of those inquiries are made public,” she said.
“It’s all good and well for Reba Meagher to commission accountants to look at the figures, but as we saw with Gosford hospital, there is no guarantee the results of the investigation will be made public.
“The public will have no confidence these findings will be made public given Reba Meagher won’t even name the hospitals involved or detail how many are being investigated.
“Dr Tony O’Connell confirmed that the findings and recommendations of the ‘independent’ investigation into Gosford hospital doctoring it’s performance figures have not been made public, telling AAP: ‘we haven’t released it, but gosh I think we should now’ (AAP 24/3/08).
“If Reba Meagher has nothing to hide, she would immediately release the results of the internal audit completed last year into waiting time manipulation within the Northern Sydney Central Coast Area Health Service.
“Reba Meagher’s silence on this issue re-enforces the public’s view that she’s got something to hide,” Mrs Skinner said.