Read My Lips... Part 2

I recently wrote about how to reduce hospital waiting lists.

Modern technology has come up with a new way to reduce them, as evidenced here in the SMH.

3000 patients byte the dust
Lisa Carty
November 18, 2007

THE State Government has denied fudging hospital waiting list numbers, blaming the installation of a new computer for the omission of patients at two Central Coast hospitals from the latest lists.

Opposition health spokeswoman Jillian Skinner said more than 3000 people waiting for elective surgery at Gosford and Wyong hospitals had been "conveniently" dropped from the September report. If those patients had been included, the latest result would have been 56,266 people waiting up to a year for their operations, an increase on the September 2006 figure of 53,424, she said.

"They don't report this total figure at all in any press release and announcements, instead talking about a reduction in long waits [more than 12 months] which have gone down," Mrs Skinner said.

A spokeswoman for Health Minister Reba Meagher said the hospitals' figures were not on the list, published on the department website, because of the installation of a "new patient admission system".