Page 2908 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 14 September 1994
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Madam Speaker, to duplicate paediatric services would put at significant risk what we have at Woden. What we have at Woden is excellent. The facility at Woden hospital has a capacity of 60 general medical, surgical and isolation beds. We should also bear in mind that the neonatal intensive care unit is at Woden hospital, with six level 3 cots. The link between the two units is very significant. That unit is staffed by 17 medical staff and 133 full-time equivalent qualified nursing staff. That number has gone up quite significantly in the last month. It was in the order of about 118 a month ago. Madam Speaker, to duplicate that would mean a significant deterioration of services. That is not my view; that is the view of the ACT representatives of the Royal Australian College of Paediatrics, who consistently advise the Government that it would be bad medicine to duplicate paediatric services. The majority of paediatric registrars at Woden hospital are, in fact, on secondment from the Prince of Wales Children's Hospital to accredited training positions at Woden. Around Australia there is a shortage of paediatric specialists. The Prince of Wales is one of the front-line hospitals, one of the best. They have people down here at Woden who are accredited for training.
Should we split paediatrics? Madam Speaker, the advice I receive is that, if we did, it is unlikely that the accreditation would continue, because people simply would not have exposure to the same volume of work. If we did not have the accreditation, we would not attract the registrars. Similarly, trained paediatric nurses are a scarce and specialised resource.
Mr Berry: How much would it cost?
MR CONNOLLY: Mr Berry interjects, "What would the costs be?". I have not addressed costs. Mrs Carnell says that it will cost $1m. She has promised $1m, despite her promise to slash over $30m from health expenditure, which was exposed yesterday, to the great embarrassment of the Opposition front bench, who were squirming at Mrs Carnell's foolish little statement, "Oh, I did not promise that". We tabled her promises to make expenditure cuts - "reductions", she called them - of $34m, balanced against new initiatives of $3m. The net result, on Government arithmetic - the Opposition obviously has a different view - of 34 minus 3, being 31, Mrs Carnell is talking of over $31m of expenditure reduction.
Madam Speaker, it is not economics that makes us say that Mrs Carnell's promise is foolish; it is medicine. On the advice of the Australian College of Paediatrics, it would be bad medicine to duplicate. However, we are not going to duplicate; so that promise, like all of Mrs Carnell's shoot from the hip, populist, foolish promises, will not be honoured by her. The Government, however, has put a proposal to Calvary Hospital, which of course rejected Mrs Carnell's foolish promise when she made it publicly. Calvary Hospital officials said, "No, that is not what we want". We are working with the emergency department at Calvary Hospital with a view to rotating some of our resident medical officers from our paediatrics unit - which links into Prince of Wales, has national accreditation and attracts some of the best doctors doing their paediatric specialty training in Australia to come to Canberra - through the Calvary emergency department so that we can provide some outpatient services at Calvary Hospital.
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