Page 1681 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 15 May 2019
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state-of-the-art facility to provide rehabilitation services in one location. Part of the reason for this was the benefit of providing a subacute facility but also, as Mrs Dunne has noted, the importance of having access to additional space at the Canberra Hospital, which is Canberra’s trauma and acute hospital but also a very important trauma hospital for the southern New South Wales region.
The principle was that rehabilitation services would be relocated along with a range of other services that were provided across the ACT in a variety of different locations including from Canberra Hospital, some community health centres and Calvary Public Hospital. With the opening of the University of Canberra Hospital and the construction of a purpose-built hydrotherapy pool there, all rehabilitation services were provided in one location. I had understood that significant consultation had been undertaken at that time to ensure that as many stakeholders as possible understood the principle behind having a subacute rehabilitation hospital to enable the continued growth and development of the Canberra Hospital campus as an acute hospital campus.
It was certainly a question I asked upon first becoming minister, that is, was it the agreed position that when the University of Canberra Hospital was opened the hydrotherapy pool at Canberra Hospital would close? At that point I was assured that there had been considerable consultation. But in the lead-up to the opening of the UCH facility last year times had changed and those conversations were taken on with some renewed interest.
It was the case that prior to the opening of UCH we agreed with Arthritis ACT to extend the life of the pool at the Canberra Hospital and also to extend the contract the ACT government has with Arthritis ACT to continue to provide those sessions at the Canberra Hospital pool as well as additional sessions at UCH.
We are doing significant work with Arthritis ACT and I will outline that further for the benefit of the Assembly and for the record. The University of Canberra Hospital pool is open six days a week. It provides 29 hours of public rehabilitation services per week, as well as 19 hours to third-party providers such as Arthritis ACT. If there are issues in the conditions at each pool—a number of them have been raised and I have passed them on to Canberra Health Services to follow-up on—we will follow up on those issues.
The primary use of the UCH pool is prescribed courses of hydrotherapy through the rehabilitation, aged and community services division of Canberra Health Services. Members of approved organisations, such as Arthritis ACT but also a number of others, who wish to use the pool outside of a prescribed course of therapy are able to gain access to the pool at a number of different sessions. This mirrors the arrangements previously in place at the Canberra Hospital pool prior to the opening of UCH.
As I mentioned earlier, it was the intention that prescribed hydrotherapy services would transfer to the University of Canberra Hospital. As I understood it at the time, that had been well understood across a number of different groups.
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