McGinty Hides Elective Surgery Admissions Failure

Doctor may bury their mistakes, but with spin, McGinty buries the truth.

Whenever Health Minister Jim McGinty changes the performance indicators in the Department of Health's Annual Reports or stops publishing certain statistics, the Desert Rat becomes suspicious, because like many people the Rat realises how incompetent McGinty is, considering the resources and funding he has given himself. He has of course complete control over cabinet.

One indicator (# 200) was changed in last year's annual report to include figures for elective surgery at the Peel and Joondalup Health Campuses because it makes the figures look better. Peel and Joondalup both have elective surgery being done by private companies that run these hospitals.

What the figures below show, is that the major metropolitan Government hospitals did about 1500 less operations last financial year, including 1600 less major Category 1 operations. This shows that McGinty is no only failing to get the improved productivity from public hospitals - he is going backwards. He boasts figures for his mini surgery centres, but the number don't add up when you look at the big picture.

		Admissions Category
Financial	1	2	3	Total
Year	Very Urgent	Not so urgent	Can wait
2006 - 07	15 921	14 075	17 626	47 622
2005 - 06	17 545	13 018	18 610	49 173

Is this because of a failure to employ enough nurses and surgeons or is it the poor people management under McGinty that has flattened morale within the public health system staff?
One thing is certain, that our Socialist Left Guru McGinty would never like to admit he was privatising surgery by getting the private Peel and Joondalup Hospitals to cover his problem in the public system. He bragged before the 2004 election that he was reversing the privatisation of the health system by buying the now failed Kaleeya and Galliers Private Hospitals.

Which ever way you look at the figures, they don't add up. McGinty has failed to get the public system functioning properly. Building hospitals won't fix the problem. If McGinty can't get an improved performance from the existing hospitals the situation won't change in new hospitals.

The main challenge is to get the current system working.

That McGinty has failed is shown by the "phased-out" performance indicator. That type of spin displays a lack of integrity and behaviour immensely worse than that of any lobbyist - yet to be found to have committed any offence by McGinty's secret police at the Corruption and Crime Commission.