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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Wednesday, 23 June 2004) . . Page.. 2465 ..

My own experiences both on the nursing staff and as a rehabilitation patient, as well as a member of the Southpaw Stroke Club and the Stroke Association of A.C.T…

That establishes her bona fides. It continues:

My main regret is that the unit did not exist when I needed it; and I urge you not to take this retrograde step. I have come to regard the unit as “The Jewel in the Crown of Rehabilitation.”

This is what the patients say about RILU—that it is the jewel in the crown of rehabilitation. Mr Corbell wants to squander that jewel. Mr Corbell has told us in the last couple of weeks and in the estimates committee that, “We’re not reducing service, we are just moving it; we are going to combine it with something else; it will be fine because there is no real reduction in the numbers.” The reductions have already occurred. Some of what Mr Corbell has been putting out recently is contradicted by others in the know. For instance, let us look at the nursing—at the number that go to RILU. I have been given a minute that has been circulated around the hospital. I will read one paragraph from it. It says:

RILU bed numbers are 14. Under “normal” circumstances we have a waiting list. The average bed occupancy over the last eighteen months is not 7 as often quoted, but 8.5-10. I will not go into the reasons why referrals have been down, as we all know the answer to that.

For those members who do not know, or have not heard, the reason for that is that the hospital lost 50 per cent of the rehabilitation doctors, so they can only operate at half the level. Mr Corbell is asking us to accept a unit that operates at half the level it used to two years ago as normal—and that is the reason for shutting it. It continues:

We can justify the decrease in patient referrals and occupancy. Today, out total patient number is 12. With the recent employment of another Rehabilitation Physician and the newly appointed Rehabilitation Advisor Nurse L3, and the planned return to usual referral from outside T.C.H…

No wonder the bed numbers are down! It continues:

…we will soon have a waiting list. In recent discussions with the Pilot Stroke C.N.C. It is obvious that RILU will also have a vital part to play in the patient throughput from this new unit.

We are starting other units that have based their functionality on having RILU and the minister is going to take it away. Ward 12B and RILU have very different functions; I would like to read from another document that has been provided from the hospital. It says:

I would like to draw your attention to the core business of RILU. That of providing inpatient rehabilitation services in a home like setting to enable patients to return home. I find RILU to be the most appropriate setting for the final stage of rehabilitation prior to discharge into the community, and I would like to share with you the reasons why.

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