A succession of difficult experiences has led former Opposition Leader BILL STEFANIAK to believe the ACT desperately needs to spend more on its hospital emergency system.

I HAVE been in hospital on only three occasions in my adult life; however, since 2015 my wife has had seven operations in the ACT and Sydney. 

She has three excellent doctors (Charlie Moss, Greta Hunter and Desmond Yip) who regularly look after her in Canberra and one in Sydney (Cherry Koh) and without whom I’d be a widower.

An ex-nurse herself, however she dreads going to Accident and Emergency at Canberra Hospital. 

A few weeks ago she was suffering badly for well over a week and wanted to get into National Capital Private Hospital at Garran. 

We went to A&E at Canberra Hospital because she has to go there first before being able to transfer to a private hospital facility. 

It was about 9am when we got there and she was admitted to casualty at 10am (not bad!), but then had to wait until about 9pm to get a transfer to the private hospital. 

Had I not rung up one of her specialists, who got on to someone he knew on duty at Canberra Hospital, she may not have got to the National Capital Private Hospital until the next day. 

There were a lot of people in A&E, including many on beds in the corridor. Many did not seem to be attended to and no one saw my wife for more than six hours on one occasion. 

Now we move to the next incident; my wife knows when she needs to go to hospital and this particular evening, after being in continuous pain for five or six days despite painkillers, she knew it was time to be admitted. 

We rang Dr Koh in Sydney, who ensured that there was a bed available at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and we contemplated driving down, but thought the safest thing was to go to Canberra Hospital. 

We got there about 6.30pm. After registering we waited and after three hours a doctor finally saw my wife (again, I had rung one of her specialists who got on to someone he knew was on duty). This doctor recommended a CT scan, but could not say when my wife could have access to one. 

She decided it was pointless waiting for something that was not going to happen anytime soon and opted to go home and get up early the next morning and drive to RPA and be admitted there.

The sad thing was that in the time we spent waiting at Canberra Hospital we could have driven to Sydney. 

Our next experience was in late June when my wife’s chemotherapy pump got disconnected while she was showering. 

There was a lot of blood, so off we went to Canberra Hospital again. She’d been told if anything like that occured to go straight to A&E and they would tend to it immediately. Well, not at Canberra Hospital where the nurse who saw her said to take a seat. It wasn’t life threatening and she couldn’t do anything about it as she didn’t know what to do. 

Indeed, it seemed no one at Canberra Hospital did, so we drove to Calvary where the triage nurse could not have been more helpful. 

While she couldn’t change the catheter, she and a colleague, both of whom had some knowledge of chemo treatment, cleaned up the wound, extracted a blood clot, ensured there was no chance of infection overnight and rang around to see if any doctors on duty could treat it (answer, “no”). 

However, my wife was sent home in a stable condition so she could report to the Zita Mary Cancer Clinic when it opened at 9am the next morning. Well done and thanks, ladies. 

While waiting with my wife, I came up with some possible solutions to the problems, not all of them costing money, but money is important to fund extra beds and staff in A&E and there is already some just sitting there: the stage 2 tram money – $1.9 billion worth! 

I would also suggest that if a patient can and wishes to go straight into a private facility they should not have to go through A&E in the public system, thus freeing up public beds. Maybe something like a private A&E centre could be established.

It would make sense investigating a roster of private GPs and other health professionals such as anesthetists and other specialists to ensure that at any one time there are two more doctors in emergency at Canberra Hospital at Woden and Calvary at Bruce. 

And let’s have a doctor on duty at each walk-in health centre. It’s pointless going there if the nurse on duty has to refer you to A&E.

My former Assembly colleague Jon Stanhope has estimated that since the deal between the Greens and Labor on the tram in 2014 or whenever it was, about $100 million a year has been ripped from the health budget. 

For goodness sake, Andrew Barr and Shane Rattenbury, I don’t care what power-sharing deals you have made, but your public health system is a lot more important than a bloody tram from Civic to Woden and that sort of money will fund a lot of extra doctors and nurses and other improvements at our hospitals.

Health is never cheap and by deferring or scrapping stage 2 of the tram, $1.9 billion could be freed up to fix our ailing health system and other essential services as well – maybe some affordable housing initiatives that work. 

Bill Stefaniak is the convenor of the Belco Party, and a former Liberal opposition leader, attorney-general, police minister and minister for children, youth and family services.