Page 238 - Week 01 - Thursday, 15 February 2018
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partners at Calvary Health, who deliver essential hospital and palliative care services to our community.
The territory-wide health services framework is a vital and exciting piece of work. It is about a holistic systems approach to health care in the ACT that puts patients at the centre of everything we do so that they do not have to go searching for the specialists or services they need. The advisory group are up and running, and I was very pleased to join them at their first meeting earlier this year. ACT Health staff have been holding forums and meetings with staff across the directorate to inform and plan the essential clinical and service planning that underpins this work.
When it comes to timeliness of elective surgery and emergency department services, I have made it clear to ACT Health that we need to continue to see improvements in these areas. We are heading in the right direction, but, as I said earlier, we know we must do better. But we should also celebrate our improvements, which are real. Again, we have seen that we are among the best improvers in the country on median emergency department wait times and percentage of patients seen on time. It is important to recognise that we have a unique mix of hospitals here in the ACT—one of the top 10 busiest emergency departments in the country—and significant increases in demand; for example, a nine per cent increase during the 2015-16 to 2016-17 year.
It is also important to work with New South Wales, as we provide health services to a growing population outside our borders. This is important for both jurisdictions, and I look forward to progressing a number of issues with the New South Wales government.
In the past financial year Canberra Hospital has implemented a number of strategies to improve patient flow within the ED. The nurse navigator role, which oversees patient journeys and team-based care, has seen a strengthened, collaborative approach to patient treatment. Further work is also being undertaken to increase the workforce within the ED to align rostering to peak activity times and to further improve patient flow, importantly working right across the hospital to ensure efficient and timely admissions and discharges. This work will continue.
As part of the budget mid-year review, the ACT government is also addressing elective surgery wait times by investing an additional $6.4 million for more surgeries to help over 600 additional patients to access treatment within recommended time frames and to achieve over 13,000 elective surgery procedures across the ACT.
It is also important that we have the right health workforce by supporting our own home-grown graduates, supporting training and professional development and attracting more people to work in the ACT health sector. This year we will develop a workforce attraction strategy to attract and retain health specialists in Canberra. I look forward to providing more advice on this work soon.
Also this year, I will have a focus on drug and alcohol issues. We will update relevant policy frameworks and clinical guidance and continue investment in drug and alcohol services and systems, importantly including work to establish a prescription monitoring scheme. I am working closely with Minister Ramsay and Minister Rattenbury on the establishment of a drug and alcohol court and associated health
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