Page 776 - Week 02 - Thursday, 10 March 2011
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
The discussions around the ownership and management of Calvary Public Hospital have provided the opportunity to relook at how and where services are and should be provided across the ACT. For example, research tells us that the most effective and efficient hospitals are those with clearly defined roles. In hospitals that provide both emergency and elective surgery, the needs of patients requiring emergency surgery will always come first, leading to postponements of elective surgery to meet the emergency needs. In the same way, hospitals that provide both acute hospital services and subacute care will, at times, find resources diverted from subacute to meet the more urgent needs of acute patients.
Health services also need a critical mass of health professionals to provide a professional and viable service. In a jurisdiction the size of the ACT, this means providing some services from a single place rather than trying to stretch scarce resources across both public hospitals. By co-locating specialist doctors, nurses and equipment in a single place, we ensure that patients get the best, safest and most comprehensive care possible.
Medical technology is another major factor in considering how best to provide public hospital services to the people of the ACT. Modern medical equipment requires new, purpose-built facilities, as older facilities were not built to properly house the new types of machines that are required to provide the latest and best care for patients. This provides a major financial consideration in terms of refurbishing existing facilities or building new ones. Our current infrastructure is reaching its use-by date, with facilities that are increasingly costly to maintain and which are difficult to refurbish to meet modern healthcare needs.
In contrast to the continuing emerging technical needs of major acute hospitals, the provision of subacute care, such as rehabilitation, is based more on therapeutic and support services rather than big machines that go “ping”. On top of this, we need to ensure that we have the bed capacity to meet the needs of our community well into the future. We do not want to leave future governments with the headaches that we inherited with a hospital system denuded of bed capacity and the lack of doctors and nurses that went with it.
As such, we are focusing on increasing the capacity of our public hospital system by about 400 beds over the next decade. On current estimates, the extra capacity that 400 beds will provide will meet the needs well into the next decade. But rather than just add 400 beds to the system, we want to ensure that we approach this task in a considered way. To do this, we have developed a set of core principles to lead our thinking.
Firstly, any solution had to have the patient at the centre. Next, we want to ensure that any solution is based on an approach that ensures patient care is fully integrated, and that the workforce is set up to provide the necessary collaboration. Thirdly, we want to ensure that public health services are accessible to all ACT residents in a timely and equitable manner. Our fourth principle seeks to ensure that our services remain safe and are delivered to the highest quality our community deserves. Finally, the fifth principle is to ensure that services are delivered in the most cost-effective manner possible without impacting on the quality of those services.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video