Canberra Hospital. An independent inquiry will ultimately look into how Canberra’s health system is functioning. Photo: Michelle Kroll.
An independent inquiry will identify publicly available health data and ultimately examine the system’s functionality after the Canberra Liberals and ACT Greens combined forces.
Opposition leader Leanne Castley and ACT Greens leader Shane Rattenbury put forward a joint public member’s bill outlining clinician and patient concerns about “excessive elective surgery waiting lists”, “reports of interference” in clinical decision making, lack of access to wait time data for specialist procedures and appointments and “delayed access” to urgent care.
They successfully called for an independent inquiry to identify relevant health data and processes that would “allow Canberrans, clinicians and policy makers to be best informed about the functionality of the ACT health system”.
Ms Castley said both she and Mr Rattenbury had been contacted by Canberra Health Services staff who were concerned about the state of patient treatment.
“The number of medical professionals who have come to us in confidence, frustrated and concerned about the system they work in, is incredible,” she said.
“They are worried that patient care is being compromised.”
Ms Castley pointed to elective surgery wait time data as a key concern and said while it might sound like her party was “chasing rabbits down the hole”, she believed having fulsome data and records would help get to the bottom of the concerns.
“[It’s] so we can understand the true state of the elective surgery processes,” she said.
“All the feedback and evidence that I know we both have heard means something is wrong and we must act.
“This [inquiry] will allow us to get to the problems that the Minister [Rachel Stephen-Smith] denies having.”
Mr Rattenbury talked about the need for wait time data for specialist procedures and appointments, as they were usually needed before elective surgery could commence.
“[People’s] real experience of the health system is obscured by the amount of time that it’s taking for them to even get into the door to the specialist,” he said.
“This data will go a long way to addressing the government’s lack of answers over the skyrocketing demand for acute services.
“Perhaps they will find that not being able to afford primary and preventative health services, or having to wait years for it, might be one of the main answers.”
The government did not oppose the motion, with the Health Minister pointing out that she and her state and territory counterparts had been saying for years that lack of access to bulk-billed primary care and specialist services were primary drivers of pressure on the public health system.
Ms Stephen-Smith said she was “keen” on making more health data publicly available but it wasn’t a simple process to present the data in a comparable way due to the number of points of contact providers had to the digital health record.
“That does exacerbate challenges in getting data together in a consistent way to enable it to be reported in a cleansed, consistent and reliable way,” she said.
The government has been working on data remediation for the digital health record in an effort to improve data availability.
The motion called on the government to establish the inquiry within three months, to be chaired by a “suitably qualified chair” with no current, recent past employment or contractual relationships with Canberra’s public hospitals.
It’s to investigate required improvements to health data that’s currently available as well as centralisation of its publication.
It’s called on the final report to be publicly available by 30 June, 2026.
The Auditor-General has flagged for the 2025/26 program an examination of the digital health record and reform of outpatient service delivery.
“We will work to ensure that [the inquiry] is not duplicative with the work of the Auditor-General and work collaboratively with them,” Ms Stephen-Smith said.
