Page 2690 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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We need to look at our administration and support services and our purchasing of services and, importantly, we need to look at our wage outcomes. Of course that is going to be an area. Anything above what is being funded for wage outcomes will need to be delivered through productivity savings. It is an important budget in that regard because it is a budget of reform. We are acknowledging that health is growing but that we need to be dealing with some of that growth and looking at better ways to manage the health system.
One of those areas that people talk about is the operating theatres. The operating theatres are operational after 9.00 pm but only for emergency surgery. Prior to that, as members have talked about, we are extending them to 8.00 till 5.00. My understanding is that is how operating theatres operate across the country. It has been a welcome change and I hope it continues to deliver increased procedures or allow surgeons to perform in a more flexible way. I know people say it is only one hour, but this year we will see how it goes.
I agree with Mr Mulcahy that increasing beds is a critical issue, which is why this budget has extra money for beds. There is $4.98 million for critical care beds and $12 million for acute care beds. That is on top of the beds that have been funded in previous budgets. Overall, we will have 126 extra beds across the system, making sure that we are keeping pace with some of those costs.
Dr Foskey spoke about early intervention and prevention, saying there was nothing in the budget this year for that. Obviously, she has not looked at the budget closely enough. There is $8 million for mental health. A lot of that money will go to the community for early intervention and prevention activities and promotion of strategies to support people with a mental illness. A lot of that money will go to the community. A certain amount of that money is going for a step-up, step-down facility for young people, again to prevent their admission to the more acute end of mental health services.
We have funding for chronic disease management in the budget. There are avian influenza preparedness and food safety programs to make sure people are not getting ill. There are the radiation safety moneys to implement the legislation we passed last week and the bowel cancer screening program, which has almost $800,000, to deal with the increases that potentially it will see from the bowel screening program that the commonwealth have introduced.
Members have said that the mental health money is not enough. We have had the commonwealth promoting around the country the $1.9 billion that they are investing in mental health over five years. There was a view that COAG may have said that this needed to be matched by states and territories. We took our percentage of that funding. We thought a matching requirement would be around $8 million and that the money that we provided in this budget would exceed any requirement by the commonwealth.
I have since found out that the commonwealth’s money to the ACT will not be coming in terms of extra services and support; it will be delivered through the Medicare rebate. ACT residents who wish to access some of this $1.9 billion from the commonwealth have to see a GP who refers you to a private psychologist. Then you go to the psychologist, have your consultation and then get your funding back through Medicare. In terms of whether we were going to get $8 million to extend services here to focus on
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