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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2002 ..

MR MOORE: If I did mistakenly indicate that there was a confusion between Community Care and High Performance Healthcare, it is because there are two separate bids. In fact, there are a number a separate bids, but the ones that I am talking about, the final two, were from the ACT division of GPs, combined with Community Care, and High Performance Healthcare. The ACT division of GPs and Community Care bid has a relationship with a US company. High Performance Healthcare also has a relationship with the US company.

One of my key commitments in Setting the agenda, which was tabled in this Assembly, was to deliver a call centre. I am very proud, on behalf of the government, to say that we are in the process of letting the contract to deliver that thing. I do not need the evidence, because that was a commitment I made, and I will deliver.

That having been said, of course there is evidence. We would have gone into this process. We made a commitment to deliver something, so we are going to deliver it. You should understand that the main commitment, when you get to deliver it, is priority one. That is the highest priority. But let me make it very clear that it is not designed to remove people from the emergency sections of the hospital. It will be neat if that happens; it will be helpful if that happens. We made it very clear when we announced it that that was not a prime goal.

The prime goal is to provide a new service so that somebody who is sitting at home, perhaps a mum with a baby who has a temperature, can phone the call centre and say, "What do I do?" The call centre can go through the protocols that are set out in the software. The software is provided by US companies, although it is adapted to Australian conditions. Once the call centre has gone through that process, it can say, "What your baby needs is a small amount of Panadol syrup and a cool bath to get the temperature down. If you still have a problem, phone back." That may be the answer. Or the answer, when they have gone through the protocols, may be: "This is a very serious issue. The ambulance is on the way." In other words, they do not have to do any more. We have already got the arrangement made. It is an additional extra service.

In the last couple of weeks I have been fortunate enough to meet with the coordinator of call centres in the United Kingdom under the Blair Labour government, which is implementing these same processes. The uptake of call centres and using call centres for health services has been quite extraordinary. There is plenty of evidence of that. The evidence from the United States, particularly Oregon, and also Vancouver-they are two I am aware of-indicates a very high uptake. The UK one is the national health online process. We know that wherever call centres have been added to communities they have been taken up at a very high rate. But the goal is not to try to keep people out of emergency. It would be interesting to examine that, but that is not the goal. We suspect it will have some impact. That would be interesting to observe.

MR WOOD: My question is also to Mr Moore. It is about the methadone program. Is it the case, minister, that the cost for clients in the so-called third stream of methadone treatment will double from $15 to $30 per week as a result of budget initiatives? What is the rationale for that?

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