OPPOSITION SURGERY IDEA REQUIRES MAJOR RECONSTRUCTION

A half-baked surgery policy from the Opposition would expose children to unsafe surgery, Health Minister Stephen Robertson said today.

“You’d think he’d learnt by now, but Lawrence Springborg still hasn’t done his homework on health,” Mr Robertson said.

“He needs to take his health policy back in for major reconstruction.

“His plan to put child patients on a referral register after 15 days on the surgery list throws patient safety out the window.

“The Mater Children’s and Royal Children’s Hospitals provide paediatric surgery across a range of super-specialties.

“They perform specialised surgery in paediatric oncology, paediatric cardio-thoracic, paediatric orthopaedics and paediatric ENT that can only be safely provided at these specialty hospitals.

“If Mr Springborg is going to send our young patients elsewhere they’ll be undergoing surgery under the knife of non-paediatric surgeons – surgeons not trained to perform specialised surgery on kids.

“Notwithstanding the obvious disregard for patient safety, under Mr Springborg’s so-called ‘contract’ we would also see adult patients requiring emergency surgery being bumped for surgery by elective surgery child patients.


“That means a 10-year-old elective surgery patient could receive their surgery before a 30 year-old requiring life-saving emergency treatment at the same hospital.

"This policy takes clinical decisions out of the hands of doctors and gives them to Mr Springborg.

“We have specialty paediatric hospitals for a reason – they perform specialised surgery on children.

“Replacing their functions with adult hospitals throughout Queensland is fraught with danger.”

Mr Robertson said as at April 1 there were no patients waiting longer than recommended for urgent (category 1) surgery at the Mater Children’s and this had been the case for the past year.

“And there were only 10 ‘long waits’ at the Royal Children’s out of a total 134 patients on the category 1 list,” he said.

“In fact, the latest Performance Report (at www.health.qld.gov.au) shows during the March quarter, 90% of category 1 patients treated at the Mater Children’s had their surgery within 26 days and 50% within 7 days.

“The Royal Children’s tells a similar story – 90% of category 1 patients treated within 35 days and 50% treated within 7 days.”


5 June,  2008
MEDIA: JOSHUA COONEY 3234 1185