Page 1072 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 20 April 1994
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diagnostic and treatment block and the creation of the new main hospital administration entry foyer block involved, one would have to agree, a period of total chaos. That was inevitable when you spend that sort of money for that sort of building project on a working hospital.
I certainly take my hat off to all the staff at Woden Valley Hospital - the medical staff, the nursing staff and the support staff - who laboured on during such a difficult time physically. We did have occasion to be out at the hospital in the last couple of years, and I noticed how difficult it was. It was a construction site. There is no other way of putting it. They were very difficult times. Now that the D and T block is opened, now that the main foyer is opened, anyone who visits that hospital would be staggered at the quality of public health infrastructure that we have in this Territory. That hospital would stand very favourably in comparison with any other public health facility in Australia.
The Liberals may get lots of grizzles about people waiting in casualty. That is always a good area to get complaints about. I went out there last Saturday night. I notice that somebody is saying that at present you can get CAT scans only with anaesthetists and that anaesthetists will not be here anymore; that the only children who can have CAT scans done in Canberra are road accident and trauma cases and that everybody else will have to go interstate.
I saw a young kid who had tripped and fallen and hit his head on a concrete fence come into casualty. They thought the behaviour was a bit inappropriate. At 11 o'clock or half past 11 on Saturday night, a radiologist came in and a CAT scan was done. I do not know how much that cost. It would, no doubt, have been a quite expensive procedure. But in this case a family came into casualty, doctors took the view that it was necessary to perform a CAT scan as a precaution, and it was done. Contrary to the scare campaign that your kids might have to go interstate, I saw a CAT scan being done at 11.30 on a Saturday night as a matter of urgency.
Mr De Domenico: By a VMO?
MR CONNOLLY: I am not sure who the professional was who did it, but whoever it was did a good and professional job, as they all do, whether they be VMOs or salaried staff.
Of course, yesterday I announced formally in this place what is happening with the clinical school. That will clearly lead to a dramatic increase in the quality of public health care in the ACT. We are moving now to bring Woden Valley up that extra notch to a full-scale teaching hospital linked - and I am very pleased that we have the link - with the University of Sydney, properly regarded as one of Australia's best medical schools. The ability to attract senior salaried staff to the Woden Valley Hospital, to work with their colleagues in the private sector, will be immeasurably aided by the fact that those senior practitioners will come in with the style and title of professor of medicine in the University of Sydney. They will add enormously to the ability of our public health system to provide good service.
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