By Member for Woodridge Cameron Dick
David Crisafulli and his LNP Government’s health failures continue to mount, with the
most recent official figures showing Logan Hospital recorded a long list of unhealthy
statistics.
More than half the patients taken to Logan Hospital’s Emergency Department were stuck waiting in an ambulance for longer than the recommended timeframe of 30 minutes.
In other words, ramping at Logan Hospital was sitting at more than 50% in the
month of March.
And in March, a third of those who visited the Emergency Department were not seen
in clinically recommended time frames.
That is particularly concerning considering the recommended time for treatment is
four hours.
That so many people are waiting more than four hours for treatment is simply
unacceptable.
Make no mistake, that is not the fault of our incredibly hard-working hospital staff.
It is the fault of the Crisafulli LNP Government which is failing to properly invest in
our health system and the staff it needs.
But the bad numbers don’t end there.
Incredibly, the specialist outpatient waitlist in Logan has blown out by 34 percent in
the space of just one year.
In our local community there are now an extra 6,000 patients languishing on the
waitlist, waiting just to get an appointment to see a specialist.
It means that almost half of all patients are waiting longer than the clinically
recommended time to get the expert medical attention they need.
These people are languishing on a waitlist, waiting for an opportunity to see a
specialist, so that they can progress to the next waitlist, which is the elective surgery
waitlist.
In short, these patients are languishing on a waitlist, waiting to get on another
waitlist.
And the problem isn’t confined to Logan.
Across Queensland, tens of thousands of patients have been added to the specialist
outpatient waitlist over the past 12 months, with no appointment likely any time soon.
David Crisafulli promised the people of Queensland he would improve the health
system.
Instead, it’s getting worse.
His promises that ”putting doctors and nurses back in charge” of the health system
and providing “real time data” would improve the health system remain as hollow
now as when he made them.
That’s because local health system data is telling everyone in Logan the truth – the
Crisafulli LNP Government is taking our health system backwards.
Subscribe to stay up-to-date with news from across Logan. You’ll receive a link to our digital newspaper direct to your inbox each week. It’s free.
