Page 2238 - Week 07 - Thursday, 27 August 2020
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Health—specialist services
MR HANSON: My question is to the Minister for Health. Minister, in the media, on 25 August, you said about specialists:
We know for example that ear, nose and throat is an issue across paediatric and adult services and there are other areas where it is quite hard to attract specialists to the ACT.
Minister, why is it hard to attract ear, nose and throat specialists and specialists in other areas of high demand to work in the ACT?
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: There are a combination of reasons. Sometimes it is because there is actually a national shortage of specialists in those particular areas and sometimes, as I have indicated, it is because of our population base of fewer than 450,000 people. Specialists want to work in areas where they are going to be able to actually treat people in their speciality every day of the week and get a wide range of cases. That is much easier to do when you have a large population base. That is one of the reasons that it is difficult.
What we are doing is working on a child and adolescent health services plan to do what we can to expand the availability of specialist paediatric services here in the ACT, as we have done with gastroenterology and as we also have done with ophthalmology, where, without actually recruiting a specialist full time here in the ACT, we now have two visiting paediatric ophthalmologist specialists one day a month each from Sydney and from Melbourne. This is also a service that did not exist before, which has created some built-up demand. That is another example of how we are trying to work through some of those issues to ensure that Canberrans can get the health care that they need closer to home.
MR HANSON: Minister, to what extent has the poor culture and failing infrastructure in our public health system made it difficult to attract specialists to the ACT?
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: I completely reject that this has anything to do with infrastructure, but I will take the opportunity to remind the Assembly that we are of course making the largest single investment in healthcare infrastructure since self-government, in the Canberra Hospital expansion. We have of course just this week opened the new nurse-led walk-in centre in the inner north, in Dickson, and reopened the maternal and child health facilities at the Dickson Community Health Centre as well as the podiatry and foot care that has returned to that centre. We continue to renew our health infrastructure.
I also point out that in the most recent culture survey conducted in November last year across Canberra Health Services—
Mr Hanson interjecting—
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