Page 2178 - Week 06 - Thursday, 26 June 2008
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We are looking at ways to improve that. I have tossed out the idea of having an elective surgery centre, like other jurisdictions have, where elective surgery could be quarantined off the Canberra hospital site to reduce cancellations but also to free up those purpose-built theatres at the Canberra hospital. In that way elective surgery could be done without being hindered by emergency surgery.
But the word that came back was that with a community of our size and with the numbers of doctors that we have we just would not be able to support a stand-alone facility. Patient care could potentially be compromised because the centre would have to be staffed with an anaesthetist. It would have to have links to an ICU and a high dependency unit, which we currently have at our public hospitals. That would have an enormous impact.
In New South Wales they have been able to quarantine hospitals just to do elective surgery, and that has helped enormously in bringing down their waiting times. That is something that we just are not able to do here in a city of our size. But one thing we are able to do is increase our theatre numbers and increase our bed base on our existing campuses. That is part of the big plan—which I think Deb almost said was visionary, but not quite—and about which Mr Mulcahy spoke positively. To give him credit, Mr Seselja spoke positively about some aspects of it as well.
That is why this plan for the future is so important. It is the only way that we will meet demand. It is about changing the whole health system, though. It is not just about focusing on the public hospital per se. It is about looking at the role of our community health centres and walk-in centres and broadening the scope and increasing the work that is done in our community health centres, even aligning them better with the hospitals so that they are seen as outreach centres from the hospital. We need to talk with the doctors about how we could do that. The centres at Belconnen and Phillip are quite close to existing public hospitals, and there is—and must be—increased scope for those centres to pick up some work that is currently being done at the hospital. That work could be done at an appropriate location, but out of the hospital, thereby freeing the hospital up to do the things that it needs to do.
I am very excited about the walk-in centres. I know that there has been criticism around access to primary health care, and this is one of the government’s responses to that criticism. They do work in other jurisdictions around the world. I know that some of the other states are looking at these. We will shortly be sending a team to the UK to have a look at the walk-in centres and how they operate there with the idea of getting one up and running. The initial advice to me is in Tuggeranong, but certainly once the Gungahlin health centre is built we will look at putting one out there.
The idea is to have nurse-led centres—an outpost of emergency departments with the appropriate medical support where people with children with minor illnesses and ailments can go out of hours and have access to free health care. I think this would be a tremendous achievement if we managed to pull it off. Mrs Dunne scoffed at my comments tonight when Dr Foskey read them. These things need to be done with the support and cooperation of the health profession, most particularly the doctors. This is a new area for us, and I think the chances of them being successful will be much greater if I have the support of groups such as the AMA and the Division of General Practice.
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