Page 3879 - Week 10 - Thursday, 20 September 2018
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update the Assembly on my recent New Zealand delegation with officials from ACT Health, the Australian National University and the University of Canberra between 7 and 10 August this year.
Madam Speaker, as you know, New Zealand is one of our closest neighbours, both in terms of distance and in terms of our enduring, positive relationship. The delegation was timely, given that there is much we can learn from each other when it comes to improving the health and wellbeing of our communities and strategies for delivering quality, person-centred health care.
That is why in August this year my chief of staff, the Director-General of ACT Heath, the Acting Deputy Director-General, Policy and Strategy, of ACT Health and the ACT Health Chief Medical Officer, along with a number of senior and eminent staff from the ANU and UC, undertook this visit.
During the tour I had the privilege of meeting with the New Zealand Minister of Health, the Hon Dr David Clark. We had a very productive discussion about the challenges faced by the New Zealand health system, many of which are also applicable here in the ACT. These challenges include levels of population growth, the ageing population, managing the procurement of large-scale health infrastructure projects and new hospitals, workforce capacity and healthcare staffing ratios, noting that Australia’s ratios are indeed higher than those in New Zealand. Key topics of the discussion included primary care models, health care in homes and health pathway models.
We discussed the importance of clinician engagement as well as different ways of integrating education and clinical service delivery. We discussed population health funding models and the importance of working with many partners in achieving good health outcomes for our community. We also discussed gestational diabetes, a focus of mine. Whilst this is an emerging challenge in the Australian health system, it is not yet registering in the New Zealand setting in the same way.
ACT Health shared information on approaches that do work for the ACT. These include the successes we have had through the healthy weight initiative and preventive health initiatives such as targeting canteens in schools and instilling behavioural change around healthy eating through the it’s your move and fresh tastes programs. New Zealand shared information on research into customer supermarket buying patterns as well as a focus on patient data related to health literacy.
The New Zealand Minister of Health and I agreed to continue to share information around approaches to these particular challenges so that we can continue to learn from each other. I want to pay tribute to New Zealand Labour’s ambitious health plans to improve the availability of health and mental health services, to improve health outcomes for all New Zealanders, and I especially look forward to hearing more about New Zealand Labour’s commitment, already underway, to rebuild Dunedin Hospital, in my old home town and where I still have close family.
During the delegation I also met with Mr Justin Lester, the Mayor of Wellington. As members are aware, Wellington and Canberra share a very productive sister city
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