Page 1965 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 15 June 1994
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What I have said to the doctors and to the nurses - to everyone involved in the health system - is, "We have to get on top of the financial challenge of running ACT Health". We are making great strides on that. Members opposite were woefully inadequate when they had the challenge, so they ought not to smirk. What we have said, in publishing and tabling the Andersen report in this place, is that there is about $20m worth of inefficiencies in the current hospital system that, as a goal, we need to capture. Arthur Andersens have indicated - and they are amongst the best private sector advisers you can buy, so if they tell us that this is the only way to go we must presume that they are correct - that there is no magic wand. It will take about three years. First, we need to establish the financial imperative, which we are doing, and then we need to move to capture some of that money.
What we have said, Madam Speaker, is that in three years' time we do not necessarily want to be spending $20m less on health; that we want to see enhancing services. The cardio-thoracic unit is really something that we are holding out to the staff at Woden Valley Hospital. We are saying that, if we can go down the path of reform and if we can achieve these savings, it is a facility that we would like to provide. We would like to enhance services and to have the full range of services. A hospital that has been through a process of massive change and rebuilding in recent years needs a period of consolidation.
We have adopted a strategy of enhancing already excellent services to absolute Australian and world standard, hence the $500,000 for the oncology department to ensure that a phoresis machine is operational. On the advice that I received from Dr Pembrey and his colleagues an hour or so ago when I was at the hospital, we will be doing our first bone marrow transplants early in 1995. In fact, the machine will be coming on stream within weeks, doing blood work and isolating stem cells; but for full marrow transplants it will take some six months to get the teams operative, to get the freezing technology operative - to get all of that leading edge stuff operative. These are procedures that are quite new. We will have world-class standards in oncology.
The outstanding area which we need to be a full hospital - of course, we are coming on stream with teaching facilities next year - is cardio-thoracic. It is something that we have said that in principle we would like to provide, but we are not going to simply throw another $4m into the system to provide this massive new service. We are going to say to the medical staff and the nursing staff, "To some extent, this is the incentive for you to go down the path of change as recommended by the Andersen report".
We are not going to be like Liberal governments around Australia which in opposition prattle on about how they want to enhance health and attack their government for all the problems in health and for the waiting lists but which, when they get into government, attack with the broadaxe. We are not going to be like Kate Carnell/Dean Brown over there. The South Australian Premier, Dean Brown, who during the election campaign made all the promises about enhancing public hospitals in South Australia, is sacking nurses by the thousands - - -
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