Page 1772 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 6 June 2006
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Cancer services will be funded to grow at eight per cent a year; mental health will be funded to grow at six per cent a year and the health and community care program, which provides support to older Canberrans in their homes, will be funded to grow at a rate of nine per cent a year.
A good health system focuses on improving health outcomes. It focuses on prevention. It avoids unnecessary hospital admissions. It provides care in the appropriate setting. Above all, it engages people in their own health, pricking them into self-awareness, encouraging them into self-management.
Reforms being introduced in this budget will streamline and differentiate the services offered by the Canberra Hospital and Calvary Hospital.
This represents a major reconfiguration of service delivery.
The Canberra Hospital will be clearly identified as the major tertiary referral hospital and Calvary as a provider of general hospital services. Both will continue to offer emergency services.
The outcomes of this reconfiguration, when negotiated, will hopefully be greater specialisation, a better containment of demand growth, and a real reduction in unit costs.
Negotiations will commence with Little Company of Mary Health Care to clarify ownership and control arrangements to ensure that the government is able to get best value for money from the services it purchases from the hospital. A planned subacute facility will proceed, boosting post-acute care and rehabilitation and reducing pressure on the acute hospital system.
Community health will be reformed. Unnecessary admissions to the hospital system will be reduced, with support systems targeting those Canberrans at risk of multiple hospital admissions and those just discharged from hospital.
The ACT’s higher-than-average expenditure on community health is in part due to universal, free access to programs that are means tested or that attract a fee in other jurisdictions. In line with other states and territories, people on higher incomes will in future be asked to make a contribution towards the cost of some community health services they access. Safety nets will maintain free access for people on low incomes, including holders of health care cards.
Mr Speaker, growth in health expenditure across the forward estimates is higher than the growth in revenue. Health will continue to acquire an increasing share of the budget. It is right and inevitable that it does so.
The challenge is to contain the growth to sustainable levels. This budget does that, but it also represents a significant investment in areas of great priority.
$18.7 million will be spent not just replacing the second linear accelerator at the Canberra Hospital, but buying a third to meet a growing demand for oncology
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