Page 1525 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 8 May 2018
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staff to make the necessary improvements in these areas, whether it be through education programs, additional training or targeted communication.
When it comes to health infrastructure, the government remains committed to building what our growing community needs. In the 2017-18 budget we made a significant down payment on better health infrastructure now and into the future with funding for an expanded Centenary hospital, the SPIRE centre, a new north side hospital and community health facilities.
Since then the territory-wide health services framework has also been developed. It is essential that this service planning inform infrastructure planning to ensure we get the final designs right. This point has been made crystal clear to me, especially by clinicians. And for anyone following the journey of the Royal Adelaide Hospital, this provides a very salutary lesson to all governments regarding the need to properly inform infrastructure planning with good clinical planning. It is essential then that we focus effort now on service planning to inform the function and design of SPIRE and future north side facilities, as well as how we best plan the utilisation of our health facilities in the intervening period. (Extension of time granted.)
Over the past 11 months, since last year’s budget, preliminary work on the design of SPIRE has begun and will continue. As members will appreciate, the final design requires detailed consideration, and that is well underway. The construction of SPIRE is scheduled to begin in 2020 but preliminary planning has indicated that it is unlikely to be completed in 2022-23 but rather in the following financial year, 2023-24. Current tender processes will give us greater certainty around time frames for completion.
As the minister, I am focused on ensuring we have high quality health infrastructure across the territory to meet growing demand. One very important point in all this is to understand the government’s commitments to deliver the right care in the right place at the right time. Around the world, while we see a growing incidence of chronic conditions and more and more people living with more than one disease or chronic condition, we are also seeing a move away from all care concentrated in acute hospital settings.
This is for a number of reasons, including that care is often best delivered in subacute, community-based organisations or indeed at home. Also, as health literacy and self-care improve, people feel more empowered to care for themselves in settings that best enable them to continue their daily lives. As a visiting British expert from the NHS said to me just yesterday, “People should only be in hospital for things they need to be in hospital for.” It may sound simple but it is a difficult solution for a complex health system. It is one we will continue to strive for while at the same time meeting today’s, tomorrow’s and the next decade’s healthcare needs.
Demand for our health services is very clear when you consider the pressures on the Centenary Hospital for Women and Children. Centenary provides safe, high quality care and services for families in the ACT and surrounding region. Every day beautiful babies are born and cared for at Centenary and families should be able to have confidence that they will continue to get high quality care there.
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