State of emergency for Chris Minns’ hospital promises
The Labor premier campaigned on a promise of fixing the state’s emergency departments. Now, the Liberals are calling out his failings, writes James O’Doherty
Opinion
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In a whistle-stop tour where he spent just as long filming social media videos as speaking with patients and staff, Minns told his 6,600 Instagram followers that Western Sydney deserved better.
At Canterbury Hospital, Minns filmed himself in front of a makeshift tent being used to triage patients through the full emergency department.
He reported a “massive wait” at Westmead, St George’s ED was “absolutely packed”, and Prince of Wales Hospital was “desperately” in need of extra funding and support.
At Blacktown, Minns said it “just isn’t good enough” that seven out of 10 patients were waiting longer than they should be for treatment.
The strategy was straight out of the playbook that delivered Labor great Bob Carr into government after seven years in the political wilderness.
In the 90s, the Labor opposition turned into literal ambulance chasers in a bid to highlight the ailing health network.
As Carr’s long-term Chief of Staff Bruce Hawker told The Daily Telegraph’s Anna Caldwell a few years back, Labor staff would camp out in hospital emergency departments to find victims of the deficient hospital system and convince them to tell their stories.
It worked for Minns in 2022, when the health system was in a staffing crisis and still recovering from the Covid pandemic.
“What I’ve seen in ED’s (sic) cannot be ignored,” Minns tweeted three years ago.
But even now, almost 30 months in government, it’s the Premier who is being accused of looking the other way.
On some measures, the five hospitals that Minns visited for his late-night social media spree are faring even worse than they did three years ago.
At Westmead, even fewer patients are being seen when they should; the most recent Bureau of Health Information (BHI) figures show that just 43 per cent of patients started their treatment on time, compared to 41 per cent in the July-September quarter.
The stats are 16 per cent worse at Prince of Wales, and four per cent worse at Canterbury.
At St George, 60 per cent of patients were seen on time in the January to March quarter (up 14 per cent) and four in ten were getting prompt treatment at Blacktown (up 13 per cent).
The BHI data also shows that overall, people are waiting longer for elective surgery than any time since Covid.
But the time it is taking patients to be seen only tells part of the story.
Last month Western Sydney Local Health District Chief Executive Graeme Loy jumped before he was pushed, amid a threat from Westmead hospital doctors were set to move a vote of no confidence in their boss over unacceptable wait times for cancer diagnoses.
The chief executive in charge of Canterbury, RPA, and other Inner Sydney hospitals, Teresa Anderson, was also moved aside after a staff revolt.
And then there are the unacceptable scenes from Blacktown hospital, first reported by 2GB’s Ben Fordham this week: an elderly patient pictured lying on the floor of the emergency department, and a woman, who presented with an obstructed bowel, left sitting in a car, connected to a drip, while waiting for a bed.
Liberal health spokeswoman Kellie Sloane says these are not isolated incidents.
“I’ve been hearing stories for almost a year, yet we’re seeing no real fix,” she says.
Sloane argues that enough time has passed since the election - and the pandemic - for Minns to have made meaningful change.
“He’s probably regretting those fly through the night visits to places like Blacktown, where he promised better and he has not been able to deliver,” Sloane tells me.
Health Minister Ryan Park argues that since taking office, the government has “almost doubled” the amount of second-highest priority patients being seen on time, and that “ramping” has dropped “significantly”.
He says that new hospitals will come online in Western Sydney “over the coming years”. That includes at Rouse Hill - which has no completion date, and which is still subject to legal arguments over how much taxpayers will need to fork out for the land.
Things are undeniably improving - but, like with everything else he promised to fix, Minns argues that there is more to do.
As it stands, no serious Liberal thinks the Coalition has any real shot at winning back government in 2027. But the careers of the party’s future leaders will rest on how well the Opposition can expose the government as being all spin, and no substance.