Page 213 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 28 November 2012
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operations of the hospital, so let us be clear about that. It is into the model of care which determines that women should, if they and their babies are well, ideally have a length of stay of 24 hours or less—within that six to 24-hour capacity.
They are the complaints I have had. I have not had other complaints around the hospital. I think there are some issues with staff that have plagued that area that we are aware of and that the directorate is working on. There are still people that feel the decisions taken around the maternity review were difficult for individual clinicians, and we lost clinicians through that process. I know Mr Hanson never talks about those people that actually moved on throughout that process.
In relation to the staff member who has left, I have looked into that, and there is nothing unreasonable about that staff change. I do not imagine Mr Hanson is suggesting that no doctor or no nurse ever leaves their post or, if they do, it is clearly something to do with some dysfunction. I understand the issue that led to that doctor making that claim.
The amendment I have circulated shows exactly what has been happening—we have a new hospital. Half of it, stage 1, is open. Stage 2 is well underway. We have a significant increase in public birthing services. We have a study that will go to a number of different areas. If there is going to be growth in demand for public beds and public birthing services that growth must happen on the north side of Canberra—that is, Calvary hospital. That is their role and that is where the extra births will go. Not all births will be done or should be done or can be done at Canberra Hospital. We have a maternity services network. We have two hospitals which both provide public birthing services. They will need to transfer patients, and they do transfer mothers between the two hospitals depending on what is required. That will continue.
I do not understand whether the opposition are saying that should never happen, that if Canberra Hospital is full to capacity, women should never be transferred to Calvary or vice versa—if Calvary is full, there should be no capacity to transfer women to Canberra Hospital. That is why we have a networked maternity service. That was the decision taken out of the maternity services review to build up the network of our two public hospitals so that we could provide better clinical service across the two campuses. That is supported by the public clinicians who work in and across both the hospitals.
As Canberra grows, it is like every other large city—if one hospital is full, the other hospital creates the capacity. That is what happens in other hospitals in New South Wales. In some places in New South Wales you actually transfer patients to other jurisdictions if there is no room in hospitals. That is what needs to be done to create that safe care for patients.
I have no doubt that the clinical care provided at both the hospitals is of excellent quality. I think there are some issues we have to work through with staff; we are aware of them and we will continue to do that.
I move the amendment circulated in my name:
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