Page 1784 - Week 05 - Thursday, 16 May 2019
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Some of the people who work in maternity services were, they believe, identified through these reports, and this has caused a lot of distress. While this in no way disregards the harm that such a matter could cause to a woman who has been subjected to such an incident, I think we owe it to our health staff and our patients, and indeed the broader Canberra community, to allow for due process and to treat these matters with sensitivity. We should also allow the maternity inquiry to take its course. This is something that those opposite have called for; so I think it is pertinent to allow people to make submissions and for the committee to follow them up and call for people to appear before the committee as appropriate.
I want to make it clear that if any women in our community feel they have not been provided with adequate care or feel they did not give consent during their hospital stay, they should feel comfortable to come forward and discuss their concerns with the hospital and/or the Health Services Commissioner, or indeed make a submission to the inquiry. They can also call my office for a chat. All complaints and feedback are taken seriously and followed up. It is only through such feedback that we can address these issues.
I want to touch on some other issues relevant to maternity services in Canberra. Maternity services have attracted a lot of attention recently. I want to reassure our community that we are making investments and reviewing our policies to make sure public maternity services in the ACT are the best they can be. After all, we are seeing a reduction in women choosing to give birth in the private system and more women than ever before choosing to give birth at Centenary hospital or Calvary Public Hospital.
In order to manage the continued demand on public maternity services, the ACT government has funded a refurbishment of Calvary’s maternity ward and developed a new ACT public maternity access strategy to reflect the single ACT public maternity system. Our new maternity access strategy has been out for public comment. I understand that there has been resounding support from the community for a single intake and referral line and a midwife appointment to help make it easier for women to choose the model of care and the hospital that is right for them. The objective of this new strategy is to ensure that demand is more evenly spread across the territory’s maternity services, resulting in better outcomes for women and their babies.
As well as the $2.6 million upgrade of the Calvary maternity ward, we are investing $68 million in an extension of the Centenary hospital. The expansion will provide additional capacity and support for maternity and paediatric services, including an increase in special care nursery beds, a new adolescent gynaecology area, an increase in inpatient beds for women’s and children’s services, and improvements to clinical areas such as the high care ward.
When it comes to maternity services, the ACT government knows that care does not end when you leave the hospital with your baby. That is why we are continuing to ensure that midwives visit new mums at home during those first critical days and weeks post-birth and providing things like free flu vaccinations to children aged from six months to under five years.
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