Admissions by Meegan Fitzharris in the Assembly today about the unreliability of the ACT’s health data, goes back to at least 2010, spawning no less than four reports of the Auditor-General and another from PwC. Still, the health minister cannot get it right, Shadow Minister for Health Vicki Dunne said today.
“Health data records and reporting are critical to ensuring we have an effective and efficient health system. Commonwealth funding relies on their integrity also. That they have been allowed to remain unreliable for nearly a decade raises many questions for the minister and her government,” Mrs Dunne said.
“ACT Health’s data management systems reached a new low last year when it failed to meet the deadlines for submission of data for the Productivity Commission’s annual Review of Government Services Report.
“The Minister’s statement to the Assembly today, announced yet another review into the data management systems, claiming that she is only ‘new’ in the job and that she wants to ‘have the right data available to us’.
“Well, the Minister is not ‘new’ in the job; in any case, this appalling record has been a hallmark of successive Labor governments and ministers. The problem is so entrenched that I have little confidence the current minister will be able to do any better than her predecessors.
“The minister’s ‘pat-on-the-head’ approach to this problem simply is not good enough. The people of the ACT are entitled to more from this government than pitiful management and reporting practices,” Mrs Dunne concluded.
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