Page 1869 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 7 June 2006
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of consumer/carer consultants employed per thousand clinicians. The ACT had the second highest positive change, behind WA, in spending on mental health services since 1992-93 and ranked third highest per capita spending on mental health services of $103.06, versus the Australian average of $100.02. We also had higher than average mental health supported public housing places per 100,000 population. In the ACT there are 23.3 places versus the Australian average of 13.2.
We acknowledge that there are a number of challenges we still have to face in the provision of health services to our community, but our commitment to this system is reflected in this year’s budget and cannot be doubted. The 2006-07 budget provides record expenditure of $751.2 million for health, reflecting the government’s continuing commitment to providing a high quality, safe and accessible public health service for all Canberrans. This is an increase of $61.2 million, or 8.9 per cent, over the 2005-06 period.
The increased expenditure will deliver growth in activity across public health services, additional elective surgery, additional cancer services, work force initiatives, part-year operating costs for the subacute facility, ongoing salary and wage increases, and increased insurance costs. These increases are offset by savings expected from the move of some administrative support functions to a shared services provider; one-off items, including property transfers in 2005-06, and efficiencies associated with lowering health cost structures closer to the average peer group hospital costs. In addition, funding of $20.65 million has been allocated for major capital works. Expenditure will grow on an average of 6.4 per cent annually across each of the budgeted years.
To meet growing demand, the budget has injected $8.6 million in 2006-07 and $57.5 million over four years into initiatives that will go towards increasing the capacity of our public hospitals to treat the critically ill, directly addressing the growing need for cancer and aged care services and providing community-based health services. Within this funding, $12.043 million over four years has been provided to enhance acute bed capacity in the ACT and build on the 2005-06 budget commitment of 20 extra beds, which are already in place. The initiative will provide additional acute care capacity across the ACT public hospital and health care system to meet growing demand.
There will be specific emphasis on supporting the objectives of the access improvement program, which commenced in 2005-06, aimed at reducing emergency department access block, reducing acute bed occupancy in hospitals, reducing cancelled elective surgery and focusing on the special needs of older Canberrans who need access to hospital and community care in a timely manner.
This new capacity will enable up to an additional 20 beds worth of capacity to be commissioned at peak times throughout the year. This capacity will be in the form of additional beds or equivalent non-hospital capacity. These beds are on top of the 60-bed subacute service that will be fully operational in early 2007. This new 60-bed service, based at Calvary, adds 51 extra beds and reconfigures nine existing beds.
A first instalment of 10 extra beds was commissioned in February 2006. The amount of $4.98 million has been allocated to provide additional critical care bed capacity across the ACT public hospital and health care system. The additional capacity will be a
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