Al-anwar Newspaper English news in Australia
Health Minister Brad Hazzard has slammed Labor and the unions for attacking the NSW health system after a national report revealed the state was leading the nation in hospital performance.
Mr Hazzard seized on the new national analysis — which looked at hospital performance between 2017-2022 — to undermine Labor’s repeated attacks on the health system.
NSW hospitals outperformed WA, Queensland and Victoria in almost every performance metric in its emergency departments.
In NSW, 77 per cent of ED presentations were seen on time — higher than all other states.
The same day Mr Minns and Labor health spokesman Ryan Park pointed to the latest Bureau of Health Information quarterly reports to attack the government on the 100,000 people on the elective surgery waiting list. Mr Hazzard said Labor had failed to report its performance in its 16 years of government.“Labor are carrying on about the Bureau of Health Information when they refused to have reports published of their performance for 16 years … the Institute report is the objective report which shows NSW is number one in Australia,” he said. “Any patient walking into a hospital ward would be far better off in NSW than any other state or territory.”
Mr Hazzard also took a swipe at unions — who have repeatedly taken industrial actions citing a “broken” health system.“In every state, the unions are representing their members and making statements that may not be 100 per cent accurate.”Regional Health Minister Bronnie Taylor said regional hospitals in NSW were outperforming their interstate counterparts.
“The AIHW data shows our regional hospitals are well ahead of major metropolitan and regional hospitals in other states,” she said. “Chris Minns and NSW Labor need to stop undermining confidence in our health system for their own political gain.”
Mr Minns hit back that it was not good enough that the state was topping the nation in hospital outcomes if there were still 100,000 patients on the wait list and 18,000 of those are waiting longer than clinically recommended.
“The impact on those 18,000 is chronic pain, pain that is not going to be relieved without medical treatment. I understand that the NSW government would like to paint some of the most devastating figures we’ve seen in a rosy light but I don’t think that is appropriate to do,” he said,
While the AIHW found that NSW had the second lowest elective surgery waitlist Mr Minns said this did not make a difference to the person waiting for treatment.
