Page 3531 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 18 September 2019
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In addition, an expansion of the emergency department at Calvary is due to be completed by around March 2020. It will deliver additional treatment spaces, improved access and triage arrangements, enhanced waiting areas and an expanded short-stay unit. This year’s budget has also provided the necessary funding to staff the expansion once it is complete. This investment will enhance access to care for people on the north side of Canberra and contribute to the improvement of waiting times.
Further, a territory-wide mental health management committee has been established to design and guide the implementation of a robust territory-wide governance framework to assess, review and manage the capacity of all public mental health services through Canberra’s health system. This committee includes representation from Canberra Health Services, Calvary Health Services, and the ACT Health Directorate, in addition to the office of the Chief Psychiatrist and the office for mental health and wellbeing.
Each of these stakeholders is working together to prioritise actions for service development and the implementation of strategies to improve models of care and capacity within ACT mental health services. The committee is developing a program of work aimed at addressing more immediate demand and access issues. As part of the program of work, consideration is being given to strategies to address demand in the ED and mental health inpatient units in addition to the steps that I have already outlined. The program of work also includes measures to improve the integration of mental health services across the territory and addresses some of the legislative and regulatory barriers to access and drivers of demand.
In addition to the committee, the ACT Health Directorate is currently developing a territory-wide health services plan, which of course has been spoken about in this place before. The service plan will provide a system-wide review of priorities for health service development and redesign in the ACT. The service plan is based on a comprehensive assessment of health service needs across the care continuum on a geographic basis and for priority population groups.
Work undertaken on the service plan is also being used to inform the development of a mental health service plan that will establish the medium to longer term strategies and service requirements to meet the needs of our population. The plan will have a focus on early intervention, care in the community and strategies to limit growth in demand for inpatient beds.
The work I have described that is being undertaken through our health system can provide an assurance to the ACT community that the Minister for Health, our directorate officials and I are working closely together to ensure that we are increasing the capacity of our health services by tackling current demand but also planning for the future.
We need to have that immediate short-term focus to identify areas that are not performing as well as they could and find solutions to them, but we also must be thinking ahead for the long-term needs of our growing population and, certainly in the mental health space, the increasing levels of demand that we are seeing.
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