Page 2728 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 13 August 2019
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One of the primary issues to be addressed is the arrangements under which the hydrotherapy sessions are managed. Nous has identified that:
The current workforce supervising Arthritis ACT’s use of the different hydrotherapy pools is drawn from the same cohort of individuals who are accessing hydrotherapy as a way of managing their own health problems. This can include individuals with severe arthritis and other physical ailments.
While greatly appreciating the involvement and commitment of volunteer supervisors, Arthritis ACT has accepted that they do not have appropriate training and capacity in terms of basic life support and pool rescue training. The Australian Physiotherapy Association guidelines do not recommend that volunteers are used for the supervision of water-based exercises as they do not usually meet the minimum training standards expected of professionals. This is a risk for the users of the pools, Arthritis ACT, the ACT Health Directorate and Canberra Health Services and is one that all parties are seeking to resolve as part of the actions being taken to address recommendation 2.
The Health Directorate will work with Arthritis ACT to discuss the terms of the existing service funding agreement to ensure both parties’ future interests are addressed. I wish to emphasise that this is not intended as a criticism of Arthritis ACT or its volunteers, but now that the risk has been identified it is important that it is addressed, for everyone’s sake.
So where to from here in terms of continuing access to appropriate hydrotherapy pool facilities for Canberra Hospital pool users? The Nous report provides details on how the ACT Health Directorate and Canberra Health Services may be able to assist Arthritis ACT and its members in accessing services that best suit their needs.
Recommendation 3 of the Nous report is that the ACT Health Directorate and Canberra Health Services:
… should quickly select one of the options presented in this report to collect enough data on the users of hydrotherapy services for health maintenance purposes to assess the best alternatives for the individual, outline support the individual may need to access this service and determine whether there are some people who can self-manage their hydrotherapy without health system support.
Option 1 would be for each member of Arthritis ACT seeking access to hydrotherapy sessions to work with a physiotherapist and/or general practitioner to outline their current treatment needs. This option would require a broad clinical set of criteria to be developed for those in the maintenance therapy category to define what ACT Health should continue to fund through the public system and which user needs can reasonably be accepted to be self-managed.
Option 2 would be for the ACT Health Directorate to work with members of Arthritis ACT to provide access to suitable clinical assessments for maintenance therapy to determine respective treatment needs. The ACT Health Directorate would also work with Arthritis ACT to explore access to suitable hydrotherapy treatment and alternative facilities as part of this process. I can confirm that the ACT Health
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