Labor's Anita Dow speaks up about ambulance ramping | The Examiner | October 24,2023 - video Dailymotion

Labor health spokes person Anita Dow offers an alternative to the Liberal handling of health and hospitals. Video Rod Thompson

Transcript

00:00 Today I'm here again outside the Lonseston General Hospital where we've got the worst

00:07 bed block in the country and we see continually day in day out ambulances ramped and delays

00:16 to patients getting access to care. And of course that's causing frustrations to our

00:21 hard working healthcare professionals, no more so our paramedics and those working in

00:26 our emergency departments. Earlier this year during estimates there was some data revealed

00:31 around transfer of care delays here at the Lonseston General Hospital and at the Royal

00:36 Hobart Hospital. And at the time they were incredibly significant, seeing long delays

00:41 for people presenting here to the hospital for care. Just this week in Parliament there

00:47 was updated data released which showed that these delays were even worse than the government

00:53 first outlined to the Tasmanian community. For a start it shouldn't take questions in

00:57 estimates for information to be provided to the Tasmanian community and secondly the information

01:02 that's provided during an estimates hearing and follow up to that should actually be accurate

01:07 information. So we are concerned about this new data and what that has meant for patients

01:13 accessing emergency care here at the Lonseston General Hospital, at the Royal Hobart Hospital

01:19 and across the north west of the state at the Mersey and the North West Regional Hospital.

01:23 I think it's pretty clear that this government after nearly 10 years, this minority Liberal

01:29 government have run out of ideas when it comes to fixing the health system. And this latest

01:34 data tabled in the Parliament only further substantiates the need and the importance

01:40 of Labor's Right Priorities Plan, which is all about investing in community healthcare

01:46 to take away the burden that we're seeing on our acute care hospitals right across the

01:51 state. And that begins with investing in our 18 district hospitals across Tasmania to ensure

01:57 that we've got access to sub-acute beds, which we know are contributing to access block across

02:03 our major hospitals across the state. That would involve employing a team involving nurse

02:09 practitioners, rural generalists and additional nursing and allied health staff.

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