Page 987 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 29 March 2011
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In relation to the other area of the bill, the establishment of the local hospital network, this bill does provide for the legislative arrangements to formally establish the local hospital network, its governance arrangements within ACT Health and also the establishment of the local hospital network council, including the appointment of people and its generic composition.
We did undertake a pretty lengthy community consultation process last year to focus on what interested stakeholders would like to see in the establishment of a local hospital network, and we do appreciate certainly the time and effort that people have put into talking to us around how they think a local hospital network should operate in the ACT. This network was required after the ACT government entered into the national health and hospital network agreement in April 2010, a national health reform agreement which is designed to drive improvements in health service delivery and also enable us to meet the challenges presenting themselves to the health system in the future.
At the meeting on 13 February 2011 all jurisdictions signed a heads of agreement providing for further reform of the national healthcare system. Local hospital networks were relatively uncontroversial components of the national health reform discussions. Under this new agreement, states and territories are committed to new funding and governance arrangements which I think largely mirror the arrangements agreed to previously but it was all focused on better patient outcomes and to help governments secure the long-term sustainability of the health system overall.
In relation to the community consultation process here, we did release a discussion paper, which continues to be available on the ACT Health website. In coming to our position in the legislation today, the government has balanced the requirements of the national health and hospitals network agreement and the subsequent COAG agreement with the practical issues relating to implementing a local hospital network here in the ACT and the feedback from the community. As a result of the community consultation, the government has made a number of changes to the composition of the membership of the local hospital network council and the annual reporting arrangements for the council and these have been included in the amendments before the Assembly. I thank Ms Bresnan and her office for assisting us with those ideas.
Since the consultations and discussions with key stakeholders, the government introduced the legislation to establish the local hospital network and the council. I am moving a couple of amendments today and, as I think Mr Hanson said, they are largely technical, but one puts in place an additional composition requirement of the board; rather than just removing medical practitioner and relying on clinical expertise, adding in clinical expertise in addition to medical practitioner. I agree, but I do not think that anyone would appoint a local hospital network council without a doctor on it. But there are issues that we just do not need to fight over and I think that is probably one of them. So explicitly there will be a doctor. In my own head, I think it is absolutely essential that there be nursing representation on it as well. Clinical expertise pulls up nurses and allied health professionals et cetera, and I think we can deal with it in that way.
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