Page 2080 - Week 06 - Thursday, 26 June 2008
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government’s request for this comprehensive planning work to be undertaken and to investigate the capacity and capability of the ACT health system’s infrastructure for our future needs. This asset planning is about ensuring we have the facilities we require to deliver improved models of care to meet future demand. This plan will provide the basis for building a sustainable and modern health system to ensure safety, availability and viability of quality health care in the ACT into the future.
So what have we done? We have undertaken a synopsis of the outputs of the health system planning that has been undertaken in the past two years. These include: critical care, cancer services, mental health services, diabetes, corrections health and surgical services plans; considered the outputs of a number of project feasibility in plans, including acute care capacity, adult inpatient mental health unit, young persons inpatient mental health unit, a secure unit, a mental health assessment unit, a neonatal intensive care unit, sterilising services at TCH and a skills development centre; and articulated new models of care for the future that utilise available information and communication technology and provide care outside hospitals wherever possible.
We have undertaken detailed acute inpatient demand modelling to project future bed, operating theatre and procedural suite requirements incorporating new models of care. We have analysed requirements for outpatient clinics, administration and interventional facilities. We have considered information and communications technology requirements. We have commenced a process of health service planning of requirements for community-based health services, including renal dialysis. We have commenced a process for rigorously projecting workforce requirements. We have held a total of 10 workshops, including a range of key ACT Health and external stakeholders. These workshops confirmed the outputs of the health services plan, agreed on a set of principles to underpin the development of the CADP, identified future models of care and their impacts on ICT, workforce and physical infrastructure and provided feedback on options for redevelopment of our ACT health facilities.
This intensive planning has told us that our current service mix and infrastructure will not be sufficient to meet the demands of the next 10 to 15 years. Major increases in capacity are required and, even with the best approaches to boosting capacity, the lead time is a minimum of seven years for the creation of such capacity. Decisions need to be made now. That is why the government has made a significant commitment to public health infrastructure and services in this year’s budget. Our planning has identified infrastructure requirements to meet future clinical services development by 2022. Big increases in demand will occur steadily until 2015, and thereafter the increases are more pronounced. This is due almost entirely to the rapid ageing of our catchment.
The headline items are that the number of treatment spaces in the emergency department in our public hospitals will need to increase significantly. The CADP provides for doubling capacity from 51 to 106 treatment places, plus an additional 29 emergency bed units. The number of ICU HDU beds needs to double. Public hospital overnight separations are projected to increase by 49 per cent. Public hospital separations in total are expected to increase from 54,000 to 96,000, and this does not include renal dialysis or well babies. Hospital bed numbers will need to increase by 61 per cent to meet the increased demand for services.
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