Page 484 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 5 March 2008
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The government is happy to support Mr Mulcahy’s motion, with an amendment which notes that the ROGS data is 18 months old. We are expecting to see improvements in all of those areas.
I do not accept that the public health system is in a dire situation. There are areas of pressure, but, as I said yesterday, in terms of the outcomes, in terms of the quality of treatment that is provided across the public health system, we rival any hospital in this country and certainly any hospital in the world.
We acknowledge that our community is ageing faster than other communities around Australia. We acknowledge that it is not just a matter of putting 20 beds here and 20 beds there in terms of extending our capacity. We have been looking at this over the past three years.
The capital projects that we have been funding are all about increasing our capacity. We have been looking at capacity in the intensive care unit at Calvary and the intensive care unit at the Canberra Hospital. We have opened a non-acute facility. We are in the planning stages for the psychiatric precinct.
We have replaced the 114 beds that were taken out by the previous government—and we have not only replaced those 114 beds but added more. All the data show that those cuts were made under the previous government. We have been behind in terms of trying to get back to where we should be. We have invested in another 147 beds. There are more beds coming on board this year. But we needed to ask—and I asked this question early last year—what you do when your hospitals cannot just keep tacking on 20 beds here and taking over the administration space that filled the hospital when those 114 beds were cut. We have removed admin staff; we have put the beds back in; we have opened new wards. What happens when we fill the wards that are currently vacant? What happens then?
That question led to quite a considerable piece of work being undertaken by ACT Health. In the second appropriation last year, there was $1.2 million to fund this work. I was very surprised not to receive any questions from anybody over that $1.2 million. It was the single largest initiative of the second appropriation and there was not one question about what it was for. I was expecting the opposition to question an allocation of $1.2 million, but they did not. So I did not have the opportunity to inform the Assembly at that time, through the normal processes, about what that work was undertaking.
That work I asked for was a complete assessment—from community health clinics to all community health provided in the home and both the public hospitals—about our future growth needs, not just for this year or next year but by the time the big tsunami of health demands hits our community. What will we need to be ready for it? In other jurisdictions where there are now considerable pressures on their hospitals, those questions may not have been asked at the right time. That question was asked.
Enormous amounts of work have been done in the short term. I am yet to get the final report on the capital asset development plan; I am expecting it at the end of March.
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