THE 2022-23 annual reports for the ACT Health Directorate and Canberra Health Services show Canberra’s public hospital system is in “continued decline”, says Liberal health spokesperson  Leanne Castley.

“Emergency Department (ED) wait times are still woeful,” she said.

“Only 47.9 per cent of presentations spent less than four hours in ED, a deterioration from 52 per cent in 2021-22, as against a target of 90 per cent.

“Only 51 per cent of ED presentations were treated within clinically appropriate times frames compared to the target of 70 per cent.  This included 71 per cent of emergency, 38 per cent of urgent and 49 per cent of semi-urgent patients.”

Canberra Health Services fell short on elective surgery targets.

“The ACT delivered only 12,627 elective surgeries for public patients – 15 per cent short of its target of 14,800,” she said.

“At the end of 2022-23 there were 2161 patients waiting longer than clinically recommended for elective surgery – five times the target of 430, and 58 per cent higher than the 1364 at the end of 2021-22.”

Ms Castley said problems with recruiting and retaining radiation therapists for Canberra Health Services were having a huge impact on the provision of timely radiotherapy treatment for cancers.

“Only 93 per cent of emergency radiotherapy started within 48 hours, against a 100 per cent target; 58 per cent of palliative treatment started within two weeks and 65 per cent of radical treatment started within four weeks, as against 90 per cent targets for both.

“Staff shortages are a recurring theme in these annual reports.  Overstretched frontline staff are doing their best to deliver quality care in a broken system.

“Again, a large number of strategic indicators are simply unavailable because Digital Health Record data reporting is still a fiasco,”