Page 148 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 15 February 2012
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Funding for the existing centre at Canberra Hospital has been provided by the commonwealth until partway through the financial year 2013-14. It was always intended, and indeed if Mr Hanson had actually shown up at the briefing that we had on growth funding—
Mr Smyth interjecting—
MS GALLAGHER: The head of Health, the head of our finance area and I turned up for a meeting on growth funding in health which Mr Hanson did not come to—and he did not provide any notice that he was not coming—to explain how growth formula works because, indeed, it was one of the embarrassing slip-ups, one of many, in the previous 2008 campaign where the Liberals did not understand how the growth formula worked. They did not allocate $200 million of the growth funding because they did not actually realise that it compounded over the forward estimates period.
It was always intended that the ACT government, through our allocation of growth formula, would take over the funding in full for the nurse-led walk-in centre. This expense has been accounted for across the forward estimates and, indeed, that information is provided to the Assembly through the budget process every year. We have made some commitments. We are very proud of them. The service opened its doors in May 2010 and, by the end of January this year, the walk-in centre has seen a total of 27,016 Canberrans, which I think is very strong evidence of good community support. That is certainly the feedback that we got through the evaluation.
One of the reasons we did not establish more than one walk-in centre immediately was in response to some of the health professionals’ concerns—the fact that they wanted it evaluated and they wanted to get the model of care right. Our commitment to walk-in centres remains. It is strong and we have been the supporters of this. Indeed, the ACT government has led this initiative across the country. There are no other publicly led, nurse-led walk-in centres anywhere in Australia. We have been the ones to champion it and we will be the ones that take it out to the community.
In terms of the decisions that will be taken about the Canberra Hospital walk-in centre, those decisions have not been taken. They will be taken, but they will be taken in consultation with the professional bodies and staff who work in the walk-in centre over any amendments to the walk-in centre model. Those amendments may include scope of practice. Some of the feedback we have had is that the scope of practice is restrictive for nurse practitioners—that it is really an advanced practice nurse model. So we need to take some decisions about, when we move this to the community, are they going to be advanced practice nurse models or are they going to be true nurse practitioner models? Those discussions need to occur.
From my discussions with general practice, following the announcement of our intention to expand into the community—and we understand that this is a challenge for GPs in terms of understanding how they fit into the integrated model of primary health—the GPs want to be involved in those decisions and in talking with us about the opportunities there. So yes—to answer Mr Hanson’s questions—there is the opportunity to have the nurse-led walk-in centres operating out of the community
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