Page 1200 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 30 May 2007
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
moved quickly through the emergency department and, if they are to be admitted, admitted into the hospital system.
In relation to access to acute care services, the MAPU brings the government’s continuing investment in beds in our hospital system to 126 extra beds. These are a range of beds funded over a number of years. There are acute care beds and critical care beds but there are also subacute beds and transitional care beds. We provided 20 extra beds in the 2004-05 budget, 45 beds in the 2005-06 budget and 61 additional beds in the last budget—bringing the total to 126 extra beds over the three years.
We will continue to lease beds from the National Capital Private Hospital to ensure that we can meet the needs and demands of the health system. The previous opposition spokesperson for health said that we were opening theirs and closing others. We are not. Our contract with the National Capital Private Hospital will continue. From time to time, particularly over the winter months when there is pressure on the hospital for beds, we will have those beds available to us and use them as required.
In relation to these 14 new MAPU beds, already I am hearing about the success of the MAPU—that it is providing exactly the right type of solution to what had previously been a complex issue about where very complex, often elderly, patients went within the hospital. They are now moving through the emergency department. I understand that we have not had any bed blocks since the MAPU opened and that the MAPU is being well used and is meeting its short-stay criteria. That is, people are coming in and then moving to other areas of the hospital once their diagnosis and treatment options have been confirmed or returning home with whatever supports they require.
I look forward to the continued success of the MAPU. We will continue to focus on access to acute care. It is an area of growing demand. This government will need to continue to address that demand in future budgets.
MS MacDONALD: I ask a supplementary question. How does this contrast with previous investment in the ACT health system?
MS GALLAGHER: It is interesting to look at the extra beds that have come into the health system. I actually asked the health department to have a look at this, to go back over previous years so that I could get a grip on where all the beds were going and where they had gone in the past. I asked them to tell me why we had fewer beds a couple of years later than we had in, say, 1995.
It is interesting to look at the data published by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare every year. There is quite a history to the number of beds in the ACT, and I can see why Mr Smyth’s preoccupation with 100 more beds overwhelmed him at the last election. He has not been able to remove himself from that number. I guess it was a question for me, too: why was there this obsession with 100 more acute care beds and no other health policy to speak of?
So we went back and had a look. In 1996, following the election of the Carnell government—this is all published data and it is available from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare—there were 784 available beds that year.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .