Page 3468 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 23 November 2021
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Recurrent funding for new initiatives is $179 million in 2021-22 and $671 million over four years, delivering on key commitments of the comprehensive health plan that we took to the last election. The budget also represents a significant forward plan for health infrastructure, with a total commitment over the forward estimates of $867 million. This, again, is a significant pipeline of health infrastructure investment and builds on the almost $1.3 billion invested over the previous decade.
New initiatives will increase the number of permanent health professionals by approximately 257 FTE. This excludes the time-limited staff who are employed as part of the COVID-19 response. This 257 FTE represents 65 per cent of the four-year election commitment we made to employ 400 more healthcare workers. So in just one budget we have delivered 65 per cent of the increased number of healthcare workers that we said we would do over this four-year term of government. Fundamentally, this budget continues to ensure that our dedicated frontline workers are supported so that they can continue to protect our community.
The budget, along with previous budgets and the incredible work of Canberrans, has enabled the ACT to become one of the most vaccinated cities on earth. This budget includes more than $85 million in COVID-19 response funding, including $52.3 million for the health emergency response, control centre, quarantine and compliance activities, and hospital and testing services across Canberra Health Services and Calvary Public Hospital, and $19.5 million for the continued rollout of the vaccination program.
But this budget is really about continuing the journey of improving our health system. The budget outlines our key commitments to improve the health system, delivering for our frontline workers, improving the experience for consumers and continuing our work to improve the quality, safety and effectiveness of our system.
Key to our plan is a $50 million commitment to deliver the first phase of the nurses and midwifery ratios framework at Canberra Hospital and at Calvary Public Hospital Bruce, delivering on our election commitment. The budget also includes key initiatives to establish a patient navigation service to better coordinate care across the health system for people with chronic and complex conditions, with $6.4 million invested over four years—again, delivering on our election commitment.
This budget supports the Stroke Foundation, with $620,000 over four years to deliver the Follow Up program, which aims to connect stroke survivors and carers with services and support, and to implement the specialist “Face. Arm. Speech. Time”—F.A.S.T—education program, delivering on our election commitment.
This budget includes funding to design an activity-based management program to support improvement in the resource allocation and reporting of health services across the territory. This initiative is key to improving the effectiveness of our health system.
I missed a large chunk of Mrs Jones’s speech, but I am assured that there was not a lot new that was raised in her speech. I am sure she will be interested in, and is well aware of, the investments that we are making to expand critical public hospital services through this budget.
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