The majority of New South Wales voters support Labor’s election promise to open free walk-in medical clinics staffed by nurses and think elective surgery waiting times are too long, according to the ABC’s Vote Compass survey.
Out of more than 47,000 respondents to the online survey, 66 per cent agreed with the statement: “The State Government should fund walk-in treatment centres run by nurses”.
But the Government is refusing to implement the plan if it is re-elected on March 28.
Just under three quarters (74 per cent) of Greens and Labor voters, and just over half of Coalition voters (55 per cent) supported the proposal.
Under the $40 million plan, 45 highly skilled nurses would work across four new clinics.
Two would be in Western Sydney, one on the state’s Central Coast and another in the Illawarra region.
They would treat colds, cuts and minor injuries at no cost to patients.
Opposition health spokesman Walter Secord said it would take the pressure off emergency departments.
“Last year, 1.25 million people attended emergency departments with triage 4 and 5 – they are the least urgent matters in emergency departments,” he said.
“Nurse walk-in centres can handle that.”
Mr Secord has challenged the Government to implement the plan if it is re-elected.
“Win, lose or draw, I think nurse walk-in centres have a place in NSW Health. I hope the Government takes them up,” Mr Secord said.
Health Minister Jillian Skinner said she has the greatest admiration for nurses but the Government would not consider taking on the policy.
“Setting up a special clinic for nurses is just diverting money and we should be using our nurses in our hospitals,” she said.
Ms Skinner also said the Government has committed $120 million to an integrated care program.
The funding would support the establishment of three integrated care demonstrator sites in western NSW, the Central Coast and Western Sydney.
“They would look at patients who should not necessarily be going to an emergency department,” Ms Skinner said.
“On top of that, there is a hotline patients can ring if they are not quite sure if it’s urgent.”
While emergency departments have seen an increase in the most urgent cases over the past few years, there has been a drop in the least urgent attendances – the same types of patients nurse-led clinics would see.
Voters think elective surgery wait time too long
Vote Compass also asked respondents if “elective surgery waiting times in New South Wales are too long”.
Out of more than 47,000 respondents to the online survey, 67 per cent of people agreed with the statement, compared with 6 per cent who did not.
Older people were the most likely to agree; nearly three-quarters (73 per cent) of people aged over 44 said yes.
According to the survey, how much people earn had an impact on people’s response; 73 per cent of people earning less than $800 a week think waiting times are too long, compared with 61 per cent of people earning more than $2,000 a week.
Elective surgery waiting times in NSW public hospitals remain the longest in the country, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.
The institute’s most recent report showed the waiting time of 49 days has remained stable for three years, increasing from 47 days in 2010-11.
The percentage of people who waited more than a year for surgery fell from 2.8 per cent in 2012-13 to 1.8 per cent.
Ms Skinner said the latest Bureau of Health Information results showed more elective surgery was being done on time than it was under Labor.
“Despite the fact we’ve done many more elective surgeries, 17,000 extra, we’ve dramatically reduced the times,” she said.
The report shows all urgent elective surgery was performed on time, along with 97 per cent of semi-urgent and 96 per cent of non-urgent surgery, up one percentage point from the same quarter last year.
However the median wait time for non-urgent elective surgery (the largest group overall) has increased over the past five years from 182 days in the October to December quarter 2009, to 214 days in the October to December quarter 2014.
Mr Secord accused the Government of “fudging the figures”.
“Elective surgery times in Western Sydney and the Central Coast are longer than they were under Labor,” he said.
FAQ
What is this?
The ABC launched Vote Compass NSW on Sunday March 1 in the lead-up to the state election on March 28.
It is a tool that allows voters to see how their views compare to the parties’ policies.
The data was weighted across a range of demographic factors using the latest population estimates to be a true representation of opinion at the time of the field.
The findings are based on 47,567 respondents to Vote Compass from March 2 to March 21, 2015.
Vote Compass is not a random sample. Why are the results being represented as though it is a poll?
Vote Compass is not a poll. It is fundamentally an educational tool intended to promote electoral literacy and stimulate public engagement in the policy aspect of election campaigns.
That said, respondents’ views as expressed through Vote Compass can add a meaningful dimension to our understanding of public attitudes and an innovative new medium for self-expression.
Ensuring that the public has a decipherable voice in the affairs of government is a critical function of a robust democracy.
Online surveys are inherently prone to selection bias but statisticians have long been able to correct for this (given the availability of certain variables) by drawing on population estimates such as Census micro-data.
The ABC applies sophisticated weighting techniques to the data to control for the selection effects of the sample, enabling us to make statistical inferences about the Australian population with a high degree of confidence.
How can you stop people from trying to game the system?
There are multiple safeguards in place to ensure the authenticity of each record in the dataset.
Vote Compass does not make its protocols in this regard public so as not to aid those that might attempt to exploit the system, but among standard safeguards such as IP address logging and cookie tracking, it also uses time codes and a series of other measures to prevent users from gaming the system.