Page 2725 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 13 August 2019
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The report was released last week. For the sake of brevity I will continue to refer to it simply as the Nous report.
To inform its work, Nous Group considered a range of documentation and consulted with a variety of stakeholders. The primary stakeholder consultations involved Arthritis ACT members and users of the Canberra Hospital hydrotherapy pool. Community groups such as Weston Creek Community Council and Sharing Places were also included. Government officials from the ACT Health Directorate, Canberra Health Services and Education were consulted, and the views of a range of clinical and allied health professionals were additionally sought and incorporated.
Through these stakeholder consultations Nous identified that a fundamental challenge in having a conversation about the management of access to hydrotherapy in the current environment is that “hydrotherapy means different things to different people”. Indeed, Nous found that the only commonality between the differing views is often the physical facility.
To explain, officials from Canberra Health Services have been considering hydrotherapy as a prescribed form of time-limited treatment for a range of specific medical conditions and, in line with the Australian Physiotherapy Association, summarise that this form of hydrotherapy can best be referred to as “aquatic physiotherapy”. Other stakeholder groups perceive hydrotherapy to be a preventive health measure, undertaken over a long period of time or on an ongoing basis, that can thus be referred to as “maintenance therapy”.
Senior medical professionals support both of these definitions, with their opinions suggesting that hydrotherapy is beneficial for both targeted rehabilitative treatment and as a form of maintenance treatment for people with some forms of chronic disease. However, this means there is no “one size fits all”, and the needs of those seeking access to a hydrotherapy or warm-water pool through the public health system are varied.
The Nous report outlines the contributing factors that have led to the current situation and makes clear the points of disagreement and contention. One of these is the current status of the Canberra Hospital pool. Recommendation 1 of the report therefore is:
Canberra Health Services and the ACT Health Directorate should engage quickly and in enough depth with Arthritis ACT to make clear the basis on which it has drawn its conclusions regarding the safety and fit for purpose condition of the Canberra Hospital pool. This should be a defined and time-bounded process, of weeks at most.
This recommendation arises from Nous’s observation that there is a clear difference in opinion amongst the users of the hydrotherapy pool and those responsible for maintaining it. Whilst the visual appearance of the pool may give users the impression that it is fit for purpose, safe and not suffering from extensive maintenance issues, the infrastructure supporting the pool’s operation presents a very different picture.
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