ARE they all lying? Opposition Leader Jeremy Hanson blasts the ACT Government for a failing hospital system the very same day the Chief Minister and Federal Minister for Health announce how Canberra leads the nation.

Hospital statistics provide an excellent insight into political spin. From the same set of performance measures, Canberra is both the best and the worst in the country!

The prime role of the Opposition is to keep the Government accountable. It should not be surprising then that Hanson trawls through the figures for the areas of worst performance. It should also be unsurprising that Chief Minister Katy Gallagher will present the best news from the same figures.

In mid-June the Federal Health Minister Tanya Plibersek announced the second quarter (for the financial year) results on “Hospital Performance, Quality and Safety Measures”.

She identified that the ACT was the only jurisdiction to reach all the targets on elective surgery waiting lists. The Chief Minister did not even need to blow her own trumpet. Hanson has been berating the Government for years over the extended waiting times for elective surgery at the Canberra and Calvary hospitals. But now they are the top performers in the country.

However, the bad news story came in the same set of statistics. Hanson moved the focus from elective surgery to emergency department waiting times claiming the “worst in the country”.

The combined Calvary and Canberra Hospital emergency departments had achieved success in only one of five categories.

In category 5 are non-urgent patients, who may have had symptoms for up to a week. The national target is to see at least 70 per cent of these patients within three hours. In the second six months of last year 77 per cent of the patients were treated within the expected time. Category three and four patients, those considered urgent or semi-urgent, provide a significant challenge for the hospital sector. In category four they might have mild bleeding or an object in the eye and in category three, severe illness, a head injury or a fracture. This is where the Opposition can have a heyday.

Category three targets require treatment to start for 75 per cent of patients within half an hour and 70 per cent of category four patients to be seen within an hour. The combined Canberra and Calvary hospitals barely make half way, seeing just 41 per cent and 44 per cent respectively.

Category two patients are in an emergency situation and need to be seen within 10 minutes. Emergency departments are expected to see 80 per cent of these patients within the 10 minutes. In Canberra, they have been more successful than in the less-severe categories achieving 68 per cent – a 12 per cent shortfall.

The most urgent of cases are the life-threatening ones that are likely to arrive by ambulance. These patients should be seen immediately. The ACT hospitals achieved 99 per cent out of 100 per cent in this category in the last six months of last year and in the last three months, emergency departments saw all such patients immediately. Another success story!

While the Government will be looking at the improvements, the Opposition will want to know what happened, on the rare occasions, when category one patients were not seen immediately.

Our health and hospital system, which costs $1.3 billion a year, is at the very top of world standards, but the Opposition will look at which hospitals in Australia outperform the ACT ones. The political challenge will be whether the Government or Opposition is more successful in getting their spin into the public domain.

Michael Moore was an independent member of the ACT Legislative Assembly (1989 to 2001) and was minister for health. He is a member of the ACT Local Hospital Network Council.