Page 1528 - Week 05 - Thursday, 7 May 2015
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We have not just increased the number of staff. We have also increased the range of services available to our community. I do not have time to list them all, but over the last 12 years we have provided for growth in demand for services while also delivering two walk-in centres that provide another care option for our community, emergency management units at both public hospitals that give clinicians a way of safely monitoring patients before sending them home while also freeing up space to treat more patients, new assessment and planning units for medical and surgical patients that enable quick transfer of patients from emergency departments to specialist assessment services that get patients to the care they need in a more timely manner, new midwifery-led models for maternity care which are designed around the individual needs of each mother, and new community-based mental health services that are designed to meet the needs of different cohorts of clients and different age groups as a way of improving outcomes.
We have also funded a range of new health service facilities that provide state-of-the-art environments that maximise outcomes and provide the flexibility to change as treatment opportunities change over time. This includes the new Centenary Hospital for Women and Children, which was designed and developed with major stakeholders to ensure that the environment was appropriate for the types of services needed; the new adult mental health in-patient unit, which was also based on meeting the needs of clients in the least restrictive environment possible; the new Capital Region Cancer Centre at Canberra Hospital that provides an integrated service environment to meet the full range of patient needs; enhanced community health centres at Belconnen and Tuggeranong and a new centre at Gungahlin; a new intensive care unit at Calvary hospital which is unrecognisable in comparison to the old intensive care unit and provides a much larger and more appropriate setting for complex critical care services; and the refurbished wards in the old tower block at Canberra Hospital which used to be the paediatric wards, which make you think they are in a totally new hospital with improved environments for patients and more suitable environments for staff. And we will continue to invest in more health infrastructure to ensure we meet the needs of our community into the future.
With all of this extra building work we have been able to increase the number of beds in our public hospital system from 670 when we came to government to 1,030 in 2013-14, a 54 per cent increase in available hospital beds within our public hospital system. This investment in additional beds compares starkly to the 114 beds ripped out of the ACT public hospital system by the previous Liberal government. Some may think that I am going too far back when I bring up the 114 beds that the Liberals pulled out of our public hospital system, a decision that had major impacts on our ability to meet growing demand for care, but the decisions being made in relation to public hospital funding by their colleagues just up the road demonstrate that the community is right to question their commitment to continue the investment in beds and services that we have managed in our last 12 years.
But I accept that it is more than just beds. As a government we have also invested in more community-based options for care. This not only provides care in more appropriate environments; it also is a more efficient way of providing health services. We will ensure that our public hospital services are funded to meet our community needs. No-one wants to be in hospital if they do not need to be. By continuing to look
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