Rights and Responsibilities

07 Jul Rights and Responsibilities

Dear Here to Help,

Recently, my 86yo dad rang the ambulance on a Friday night. When the ambulance arrived, the paramedics suggested that he should not go to hospital, but should wait until Monday to see his GP. The paramedics said Dad was likely to wait a long time in hospital, and there was a risk he could catch the flu or covid in the waiting room.

How is this okay? Why did Dad have to wait till Monday? Surely, government should do something about this situation, so that Dad can go to hospital when he needs to, rather than wait till Monday to see his GP!

Thank you for your query.

This example is about the difficult interaction between social (government) and individual responsibility.

The easiest way to think about this is that government cannot be responsible for everything in our lives. It would be expensive and intrude into our personal decision-making and freedoms.

From a public policy perspective, there is a fine balance between facilitating people and businesses doing things that help advance our society and curbing behaviour that harms our society. There is a lot of behaviour and actions that fall in the middle – so what do we do about these things?

One of the hardest things to do in government decision-making is remove something from people. Even if people do not use that thing, or do not realise they have access to that thing, they do not want to lose possible access to that thing.

It’s a tricky area, particularly in healthcare. In some cases, the best decision for the community as a whole may seem counterintuitive, or even create difficulties for some people.

Let’s look at some healthcare examples… Statistics show that some hospitals or healthcare practitioners have higher incidences of poor health outcomes than others. People who know the system generally try and avoid those hospitals or practitioners for themselves or their loved ones. However, in the words of Sir Humphrey (Yes Minister), it would be a very brave decision for any government to close, temporarily or permanently, that hospital. So, how do we help this hospital, and its employees, deliver better health outcomes to the community, without reducing services in the meantime, or diverting resources from other hospitals? It’s tricky.

Your ambulance/emergency department query is another example. Like all other services, hospitals have limited space and staffing. There are some questions to ask before we proceed. Is it an emergency? Is it reasonable for everyone’s after hours medical issues to be addressed in hospitals? What is an emergency? Data shows that people ring the ambulance for things such as a “lost engagement ring”, hiccups and even lost acrylic fingernails. What are the risks of having generally healthy people in a hospital environment, for example hospital-acquired infections? Where are you most likely to obtain the best and most holistic treatment for your healthcare concerns?

There is no simple answer to your query, but hopefully this helps you better understand the kind of things that are taken into consideration during government’s decision-making process in situations like this.

This article comes from my column entitled “Here to Help” in Hunter Local, July 2022. If you have an everyday problem just begging for a simple, real world solution, send it to “Here to Help” and let’s see what we can achieve.

Elaine Abery has a closet full of great ideas and empowering solutions. She’s also the Director of Unravelling Red Tape, a company dedicated to helping everyday people, not-for-profits and companies change the world through improved decision-making and legislation.