Health Minister Sarah Courtney rejects Labor claims she is missing in action

The state’s health system has been failing for a decade and needs fundamental reform, the peak medical body says.

THE state’s ailing health system had been sliding into crisis for the past decade and needed a complete redesign, the state’s top medical body says.

AMA Tasmania vice president Dr John Davis said there would be no solution to the crisis raging in the health system without fundamental reform.

“There’s got to be a recognition by government that the problem is serious, that whatever they’ve been doing is not working, you cannot keep putting smaller and smaller Band-Aids further and further to the edge of a problem in the hope that you will solve it.

“We need to redesign the health system in this state at its core. The Band-Aids aren’t working. The silence is not working.

“We need a redesign and a strategy going forward, not just for tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, but for the next 30 years.”

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Health Minister Sarah Courtney today rejected Opposition claims she is ”missing in action” during the state’s hospitals crisis.

Ms Courtney has come under fire for her handling of twin crises in the state’s hospital system and ambulance service.

On Monday, the peak body for emergency department doctors called for a spill of senior health department staff to force change.

In state parliament this morning, Labor leader Rebecca White repeated the Opposition’s accusation that Ms Courtney was not keeping the public informed.

Labor leader Rebecca White. Picture: ZAK SIMMONDS

“You’ve been health minister since June,” Ms White said. “You’ve spent most of that time hiding behind bureaucrats and the failed former health minister Michael Ferguson, who has spoken more about health than you have.

“Will you finally explain what you’re going to do to respond to the escalating crisis in a hospital system?”

Ms Courtney said she was working hard on finding ways to ease the pressure on the state’s major hospitals and rejected the opposition’s characterisation of her performance.

Health Minister Sarah Courtney. Picture: ZAK SIMMONDS

“I want to make it very clear that in the four months that I have been Health Minister I have been consulting, speaking with clinicians, speaking to nurses and doctors in our hospitals — indeed as recently as yesterday at the Royal and on the weekend at the LGH,” she told parliament.

“This portfolio touches all Tasmanians and I take that responsibility incredibly seriously, and I refute any allegation from the other side that I’m somehow missing in action in this portfolio, Madam Speaker, because I have been working hard every single day

“We’re working in good faith to make sure that we’re getting solutions.

“I welcome feedback from clinicians, I welcome feedback from those working within the system, because they are best placed to be able to understand both the challenges but to help form the solutions.”