Page 697 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 11 February 2009
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The ACT government has acknowledged the ongoing problems that we experience with long elective surgery waiting lists, and this again is an issue that affects all of Australia. The commonwealth acknowledged this by providing one-off funding last year to assist in decreasing waiting lists. The ACT government has made good progress since then on its elective surgery waiting lists, but I note that the number of people waiting for surgery does remain high.
Waiting lists are also greatly affected by people in hospital beds waiting for services in the community. This includes support at home, placement in step-down, step-up or convalescent facilities or a placement in a residential aged care facility. This goes to the way we fund heath services and the need to change to a more preventative focused health system with much greater emphasis on community based services.
The lack of GPs in Canberra, and bulk-billing GPs at that, is an issue and is a key reason why we have a high level of demand on our emergency departments. The body responsible for GPs and bulk-billing is the commonwealth government, and this again relates to overall workforce issues and is one which requires, as I have already stated, national cooperation.
The ACT government has a strategy of enhancing health services available in the community via models such as community health centres and walk-in clinics. Again, with this, we must consider the number of new graduates entering the workforce, which goes to the point of not just attracting workforce, including GPs, but developing and retaining the workforce.
The Greens recognise the need for people to avoid acute health care, where possible, and for this reason the ALP-Greens agreement includes initiatives relating to this, including providing space in community health centres for GPs to provide services and reconsidering the option of the community midwives program attending home births.
When we look at overall health system reform it is important that consumer representatives are involved in the evaluation of existing programs and the design of new ones as they can provide some of the best advice on how programs can better be tailored to meet the needs of the consumer in an efficient and cost-effective manner.
I encourage both the Liberal and Labor parties to pay attention to comments made by the Health Care Consumers Association of the ACT, including those which relate to the AMA report which has been referred to in the motion. On 12 November the Health Care Consumers Association stated:
The AMA is quite right to draw attention to the bottlenecks occurring in Australian hospitals. It is a bit behind the game. At the national level the Commonwealth has established a Health and Hospitals Reform Commission to address these problems, and locally the ACT is implementing a major capital asset redevelopment plan covering both the Canberra Hospital and Calvary hospitals.
Consumers will welcome additional hospital beds which ensure that they are not put up for long stays on trolleys in emergency departments when they need to be
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