Qld Health Minister Lawrence Springborg defends meeting one public hospital target in COAG report

The latest review of Australia’s public hospitals shows Queensland has met just one target, but the state’s Health Minister Lawrence Springborg says a lot of the issues have already been addressed. The COAG Reform Council report looked at elective surgery and the performance by emergency departments in 2013. It found Queensland had met just one target by reducing the number of patients in the top 10 per cent of those who had been waiting longest for elective surgery. The report outlines a number of failures, including the time frame for treating semi-urgent and non-urgent patients and seeing those who present to emergency departments in four hours. It found in Queensland, 93.7 per cent of urgent elective surgery patients were seen within the recommended timeframe, but that fell short of the target of 100 per cent. But Mr Springborg says the COAG Reform Council report is at least six months old and this year’s statistics are better. Read more…