Ms O’CONNOR – It might not. It might not. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to explore the vacancy control program. There was a leaked email which went out to, we presume, numerous THS staff which confirmed the existence of a vacancy control program. At least one committee was referenced in that leaked email which was established to oversee the process. Have any staff roles been entirely exempted from vacancy control measures?
Mr BARNETT – Well, thank you. Firstly, with respect to that issue, it’s obviously been debated quite publicly. And certainly, in our house, the Premier and I have taken questions on that, noting in the last 10 years, we’ve put on an extra two-and-a-half thousand health professionals, including 1390 nurses. I’ve given you the update of the latest recruitment figures just a few moments ago. I think in terms of the detail around that, it’s best for the acting secretary to speak to that matter.
Mr WEBSTER – Through you, minister. Within our nursing award, we have a concept known as ‘nursing hours per patient day’, and that’s a – if you like, it’s a benchmarking exercise that’s done between our individual wards and equivalent wards in other hospitals across Australia. Through that process, there is a calculation that works out, okay, because of the level of acuity of our ward, because of the different types of things – it might be cut-out care versus general medicine, et cetera. There’s a calculation of how many nursing hours per patient day we need. Through our vacancy management, we’re not looking at any of those requests. They go straight through the process, because there is an award provision that calculates nursing hours per patient day, and our chief nurse monitors those.
Ms O’CONNOR – Sorry to interrupt, acting secretary. Sorry to interrupt, but the question was actually have any staff roles – so are senior surgeons exempted from vacancy control? What positions, if any, have been exempted from vacancy control? Or have none been?
Mr WEBSTER – So through you, minister. Any role that is a nursing role that goes through –
Ms O’CONNOR – It’s not just about the nurses.
Mr WEBSTER – Yes. Is –
Mr BARNETT – Sorry, Chair. Can we just allow the acting secretary to just –
Mr WEBSTER – Yes.
CHAIR – Yes. Yes.
Ms O’CONNOR – Sorry. I’m just making sure that it’s understood.
Mr BARNETT – Please.
Mr WEBSTER – I was just explaining they are exempt. They don’t go through vacancy control, because there’s a process that calculates that calculation.
Ms O’CONNOR – Yes.
Mr WEBSTER – So effectively, any front-facing nurse where the job is attached to nursing hours per patient day is exempt, because it goes through a process where the Executive Directors of Nursing send it to the Chief Nurse for verification, and then it goes to recruitment. In a number of other areas – and I’ll use doctors as an example – they’re not exempt, but in the majority of cases, we’re actually looking at is our recruitment process sufficient to get that doctor.
What I mean – I’ll give a few examples of that, but firstly, with registrars, last year we got an exemption from the Premier from ED1, and so we’re not limited in the length of contracts that we can give our junior doctors that are training. So traditionally, registrars have been employed on a year-by-year basis, and every year, we have to do a new contract for them, and they make a decision about whether they’re staying or not. Through ED1, we now have a process where we can appoint those doctors for the length of their training, which for some is up to six years for their training. So, we are doing a check through our vacancy management process to make sure we are advertising them for the length of training.
Ms O’CONNOR – Okay.
Mr WEBSTER – Other examples have been where we’re getting people saying, ‘We’ve worked out we need 0.84 of a doctor in this area.’ We’ve actually been saying, ‘No, let’s advertise it as “up to full-time” to try and attract people.’ It’s more than likely that vacancy management is actually intervening with doctors on those bases rather than your concept of ‘exempt’.
Ms O’CONNOR – All right. All right. Thank you for that answer. So just to be clear: is it nurses in patient-facing roles who are the one category of worker in the THS who would be exempt from vacancy control measures?
Mr WEBSTER – Yes. You could explain them as that, yes.
Ms O’CONNOR – Okay.
Mr WEBSTER – It’s those that are in our wards that are covered by nursing hours per patient day.
Ms O’CONNOR – Okay. Can I ask, then, what level of funding, minister, are you hoping will be saved by using vacancy control measures? We’re trying to ascertain here whether there’s one vacancy control committee and the whole of the THS, or if there are various ones in different units.
Mr BARNETT – I’ll just quickly say I think the Treasurer outlined the budget savings measures last week, which I know the acting secretary’s spoken to. He’s spoken to the vacancy control measures and how it’s managed in terms of that in the more detail. And around that, I’ll ask the acting secretary to respond.
Mr WEBSTER – That’s so. Through you, minister, we would hope to save between $5million and $7 million dollars a year through the vacancy management process.
Ms O’CONNOR – $5 million to 7 million? Yes.
Mr WEBSTER – But I’d emphasise that that is around things like if we advertise for a 0.6 doctor and don’t get one, we will usually have a locum on.
Ms O’CONNOR – Sure.
Mr WEBSTER – So we might as well advertise for the full-time doctor and save the 200 per cent markup. And so vacancy management is – we’re being very careful here. It is actually not about knocking back jobs; it’s actually saying, are we recruiting the right people? Are we recruiting in the right way? I would say to you that in the first five or six meetings as we’re getting going, we actually probably spent more money than we save, because we were emphasising that need for length of training contracts for our transition to practice nurses. We have an exemption so that we don’t appoint them for 12 months anymore. We appoint them permanently, and we use their probation as the transition to practice. So, again, we don’t have to go through two selection processes, and we also don’t have the person thinking about leaving because their contract’s about to come to an end.
Ms O’CONNOR – Okay. So just finally on this issue, is there more than one vacancy control committee in the THS, or is it just the one entity that is overseeing this?
Mr WEBSTER – Through you, minister, it’s one entity.
Ms O’CONNOR – Okay. Thank you.
