Following the revelation that patients have not been informed of the recent resignations of their surgeons from Canberra Health Services, Independent MLA Thomas Emerson has written an open letter to the Minister for Health, Rachel Stephen-Smith MLA, seeking an explanation. Mr Emerson is also calling on the Minister to explain why advice she provided in the Assembly conflicted with advice provided to a patient by Canberra Health Services.

During Question Time last Tuesday, Mr Emerson asked Minister Stephen-Smith about one of their shared constituents, Carol Croce, who has been waiting for six years for a hip replacement in the ACT’s public healthcare system and whose surgeon, former head of orthopaedics Professor Paul Smith, has recently resigned. The Minister suggested that Ms Croce would have been operated on more quickly if she had been on a pooled waitlist, and requested her details so that Canberra Health Services (CHS) could contact her. Ms Croce was then contacted by CHS last Friday to be told there is, in fact, no pooled waitlist.

“It doesn’t add up,” said Mr Emerson.

“Is there a pooled surgery waitlist or not?

"Who is being misled here – the Minister, the Assembly, or the Canberrans waiting to get surgery?

"We hear a lot about person-centred care, so it's pretty galling that nobody thought to tell patients that their surgeon had resigned.

“People like Ms Croce are the collateral damage of the government’s repeated failure to communicate clearly with both patients and clinicians.”