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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 1 Hansard (17 February) . . Page.. 230 ..

MS CARNELL (continuing):

health system to help maintain our high-quality service. We introduced casemix funding systems for both Calvary and Canberra hospitals from 1 July 1996. There has been an increase in cost-weighted separations - that is, patients assessed according to acuity - at both major hospitals every year.

Mr Speaker, we established a new cross-border health committee, comprising senior New South Wales and ACT health officials, to improve service coordination in the Australian capital region and negotiate a better funding outcome for New South Wales patients treated in ACT facilities. We completed the $172m redevelopment of the Canberra Hospital campus. We provided additional funding of $250,000 to establish a new hepatitis C prevention and management strategy in the ACT, allowing another 50 patients to access interferon treatment through a partnership arrangement with Canberra's GPs. We expanded the ACT's methadone program from just 80 places - - -

Members interjected.

MR SPEAKER: Order, please! Not only are interjections out of order; they are also irrelevant to this debate.

Mr Stanhope: Michael, you cannot be too pleased with what you did with methadone.

MS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, if Mr Stanhope would be quiet, it would be much easier.

MR SPEAKER: I uphold the complaint.

MS CARNELL: Mr Stanhope was making comments about the methadone program. When we came to government, there were 80 places. We increased those places to 350, to 430, through the introduction of a community pharmacy program. We built a new state-of-the-art renal dialysis unit adjacent to Canberra Hospital to replace the ageing facility on Acton Peninsula that was allowed to fall apart under the former Labor Government. The centre now has 16 dialysis stations and four home-training rooms. We built a new $1.5m early childhood residential service in Curtin to replace the old QEII building in Civic. We established two new family care centres in Gungahlin and Conder to provide more comprehensive health services for parents and children in Canberra's growing outer suburbs.

We refurbished the Canberra Hospital's rehabilitation and aged care wards and the pathology building, at a cost of more than $9m. We opened a new 15-bed independent living unit at Gaunt Place in Garran to provide a specialist rehabilitation centre in a community setting for people recovering from major accidents and injuries. We refurbished the Phillip and Kippax health centres at a cost of more than $5m. We introduced new wound management and continence promotion clinics. Mr Speaker, the list goes on and on. The fact is that a lot was achieved in the first term of this Government. (Further extension of time granted) We have managed to see a lot more patients in our acute hospital setting, in accident and emergency, in our hospital setting and in areas like hospital in the home - a very important initiative that has provided significantly better outcomes for patients.

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