Page 3255 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 21 August 2019
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The infrastructure plan will of course look beyond a budget cycle to a pipeline of projects that will need to be prioritised for government investment over the coming decades. It will take into account factors like our growing population, the changing geography and demography of our city and the urgent need to increase our resilience to the effects of harmful climate change. It will set out clear priorities for investment so that we can work with industry, stakeholder groups and the wider community to effectively design and deliver the infrastructure that our city needs as we continue to grow towards half a million people.
Health—flu season preparedness
MR WALL: My question is to the Minister for Health. Minister, why has your flu season plan for 2019 failed?
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: Again, without accepting the premise of Mr Wall’s question, I have no idea on what basis he determines that the flu season plan has failed. What I can say in relation to the winter strategy is that a number of measures to support seasonal demand were implemented prior to 11 July 2019. This included the introduction of strategies to improve discharge planning, removing barriers to discharge, increasing access to pathology, rapid testing to enable early diagnosis of influenza, and commencement of additional recruitment to address this seasonal demand.
A targeted external communication strategy also commenced in June to promote the utilisation of walk-in centres and to help Canberrans better understand the difference between a cold and the flu. The opening of an additional 16 winter beds at the Canberra Hospital and the all-care discharge unit that I spoke about earlier in question time commenced on 11 July. Twelve additional beds have been progressively opened at the University of Canberra Hospital since June 2019 to provide additional capacity into the system.
I spoke earlier about the all-care discharge unit, which provides a broader model of care than the previous discharge lounge, enabling non-ambulant patients to access this service, an important part of the timely care strategy. The commencement of both the additional beds at TCH and the all-care discharge unit were aligned to the completion of critical infrastructure works across the campus.
Unfortunately, a flu season does not give advance notice of the fact that it is going to arrive earlier than it has in any year over the past 10 years, but Canberra Health Services responded and is managing the situation.
MR WALL: Minister, will you be sharing ACT data and analysis with other jurisdictions and discussing with them how all jurisdictions can be better prepared in 2020? If so, what arrangements have been entered into?
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: I thank Mr Wall for the supplementary question. Of course, all jurisdictions share this kind of information routinely. The management of flu seasons is done at both the national and local levels and people share that information.
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