Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

I will deal with both of those contributions. I refer the member for Boothby to amendment (5), which requires COAG agreement to extend the scope. Amendment (7) deals with the way reporting works but not the scope of what else can be reported. I think that should satisfy his request for clarification.

The member for Bowman raised a very legitimate question about the range of data that is already collected and also concerns about timely data and comparable data. One of the big changes that have been agreed to by the states and territories as part of this negotiation and the introduction of the performance authority is the streamlining of reporting so it is more timely, comparable across jurisdictions and able to be provided hospital by hospital. The Health Performance Authority will work with those existing datasets and in some areas create new datasets to be able to do its job properly. So a range of things that were not available before will be available when the Health Performance Authority is able to do its work properly. We will have truly comparable and timely data about each hospital across jurisdictions.

Health ministers have already agreed to do some work on how we can streamline all of the different existing datasets. We do not have any interest in reporting for reporting sake. We want the reporting to be better in having more indicators and being more comparable across the country. Whilst everyone said we should look at what the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare collects and we should look at what is already provided for reporting in each of the states, we also are moving forward on agreed national reporting measures, for example, on infection rates. In October this year for the first time hospital-by-hospital infection rates will be published on the My Hospitals website. None of that could have happened if we did not have agreement on how we are going to progress with all of this performance reporting.

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