Page 1735 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 4 June 2014
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together will deliver more doctors and nurses, more hospital beds and an expansion of service in state-of-the-art facilities. In particular, there is $54.6 million in funding for more general inpatient beds at both Canberra and Calvary hospitals and more bed equivalents in the hospital-in-the-home service, which a very popular service offered in the ACT.
There is also $34 million towards expanding our elective surgery program and also for the first time bariatric surgery is offered. There is $15.1 million for the expansion of intensive care and critical care services, which will provide funding for additional intensive care unit beds at Canberra Hospital and one additional ICU bed at Calvary Public Hospital.
There will also be investments in health services for women and children. The expansion of services there includes five additional beds and 15 staff allowing for our graduated ramping up in the neonatal intensive care unit, the paediatric inpatient unit, some extra services for paediatric day surgery and the expansion of the delivery suite and birthing centre by an additional bed.
There is also money going to increase cancer services to employ staff as the demand for cancer services continues to grow. It will allow us to increase those services once the Canberra regional cancer centre is opened later this year. Also, there is $3.5 million to provide more resources in our emergency departments. Two additional emergency department positions will be employed, one at each hospital. These will be senior positions designed to reduce waiting times and, again, to meet that growing demand.
Importantly for your electorate, Ms Berry, there is money in the budget to open the walk-in centre at the Belconnen Community Health Centre, as there is money to flow through to open the Tuggeranong walk-in centre at the newly refurbished community health centre in Tuggeranong.
There is money also to expand our community nursing service to ensure that we are able to care for people in their homes and to keep them out of hospital, and additional resources are going into mental healthcare services. Again, there is money for the community mental health treatment teams, some money for suicide prevention services and some money to ensure that we are able to deal with some of the consequences of the Mental Health (Treatment and Care) Act that will commence once it passes the Assembly.
Also, there is money to expand services at Calvary with the ophthalmology services there. There is more money for endoscopy services and money to extend our outpatient and imaging services. So you can see there just in terms of the growth of those services the importance the government has placed on our health services in terms of meeting the needs and growing demand. I think this has been welcomed by all of those stakeholders who know and understand the ACT health system.
MADAM SPEAKER: Supplementary question, Ms Berry.
MS BERRY: Minister, how has the ACT government dealt with the reduced health funding in the recent federal budget?
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