Page 214 - Week 01 - Thursday, 15 December 2016
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I would like to speak about the government’s priorities in health. Over the last 15 years the ACT Labor government has invested significantly in our health system. Our investment demonstrates the importance we place on ensuring that the people of Canberra have access to high quality healthcare services when and where they need them. Our government has a 10-year health plan that provides the foundation for us to continue to build an innovative and world-class health system for the ACT.
Our 10-year health plan has five key planks: preventative health—empowering people to understand their own health and investing in prevention to reduce the burden of ill health and disease on our community; access—access to the highest quality health services, in particular the delivery of services where and when people need them; infrastructure—building essential health infrastructure to support health services across our community; our workforce—investing in a highly skilled workforce; and research—harnessing our research capabilities to deliver health outcomes and support Canberra’s higher education institutions. This plan will also be supported by ongoing priorities in the Health portfolio, notably the clinical services framework that will inform the strategic direction for healthcare delivery over this period.
With the appointment of Shane Rattenbury as Minister for Mental Health, I also welcome a strong focus on mental health services, and in particular the upcoming establishment of the office of mental health.
As minister, I will have a strong focus on prevention because, put simply, prevention is always better than the cure. As I said in my inaugural speech in this place, we must continue to invest in and use world-class services, but it makes sense that we find innovative ways to spend more on prevention.
We will appoint a preventative health coordinator responsible for developing a comprehensive preventative health strategy to build on the work of the nation-leading towards zero growth policy that promotes healthy choices and behaviours; our alcohol, tobacco and drug policies; and our active travel policies. This will ensure we reduce the growing incidence of chronic health conditions such as heart disease and diabetes.
This work is generally regarded as a marathon, not a sprint, but we need to make inroads across many policy areas to reduce the incidence of preventable disease and ill health in our community and we need to build strong evidence to support continued investments in preventative health. I look forward to holding a stakeholder workshop in early 2017 to engage with the existing and new stakeholders on ideas and suggestions for this strategy.
Access to the right health service at the right time in the right place is vital to the health and wellbeing of Canberrans. Under the clinical services framework our health system will be more streamlined, with strong links between all of our services, both acute and community based, to ensure that the patient journey is smooth and continuity of care is enhanced.
The health system and each patient’s journey will be focused on the needs of the patient. Patients should not need to understand what is a complex system, and our
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