Page 2370 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 29 August 2007
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
To work towards a better health system is to make sure that people are informed and educated and managing their understanding of disease and their access to knowledge. We have to get involved as a community if we are going to get the maximum return on our financial investment. As I have said before—to the great annoyance, perhaps, of the Stanhope government—despite three health ministers and a plethora of plans right across the health sector, I do not believe we are seeing the full benefit of some no doubt very hard work by some individuals in the system, and the Canberra community are tending to receive less, not more, by way of basic services.
There is a pressure for hospitals to manage against a vast range of performance targets, and we have been focused on providing the best possible care that we can give to patients. We have done that with practical guidelines and with the use of prescribed medicines. We need to begin, however, to change that model and think about how we can better serve the population more broadly in relation to better health outcomes. We need to be all about maintaining health so that people do not come to hospitals in an advanced state of a chronic disease process. We also need to be innovative in finding ways of calling on the community to take responsibility and assume care for their own health. Prevention is always better than cure.
Whilst the opposition acknowledges that increased expenditure on acute services does meet some health care needs, it is widely recognised that shorter lengths of stay and more chronic conditions require a different mix of health services to deliver the best outcomes for consumers. This includes more community based health services and more non-medical support services to avoid hospitalisation. While some money has been made available for chronic disease management and self-management, this budget has done little to address the real need to avoid hospitalisation through appropriate community based service to keep people out of hospital or to support the safe early discharge of those who are hospitalised.
The current system is somewhat of a travesty. Why should people have to suffer a stroke or a heart attack before they get high quality care? That is not the price of admission. That is really how we have to rethink the way we look at health care. Instead of looking at what we need to do to the patient when they arrive in the emergency department, we really need to begin thinking about how to maintain and preserve health.
One-stop-shop clinics or GP plus clinics, as I believe they are referred to in South Australia and which the opposition recommended in their estimates additional and dissenting report, would, I believe, complement Canberra’s existing health infrastructure in the new northern and southern suburbs and provide leadership and direction through innovation in multidisciplinary service delivery and service standards. As I have already said, but it is worth repeating, Mr Rudd must have read our report because he recently made a similar announcement.
The government’s lack of response to this or any of the opposition’s recommendations is simply a show of abstract laziness—throwing it all in the too-hard basket—and a lack of will to work with anyone else who may come up with good ideas for the benefit of all Canberrans. I had hoped that this might be an area, particularly, where a bipartisan approach could be adopted.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .