Page 3112 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 16 September 2015
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
There are a number of community health centres across Canberra, including in Tuggeranong, Gungahlin and Belconnen, that were built as part of the health infrastructure program. The Gungahlin Community Health Centre opened on 3 September 2012, and the care provided by the community health centre is multidisciplinary and collaborative and is provided in a culturally safe environment.
I have had the great pleasure of taking a tour through the new Gungahlin facility located in the town centre and close to other community services. It is a wonderful new facility and houses some really experienced and enthusiastic staff. I regularly encourage locals to check it out for themselves. It provides a whole host of services for the local community, including community nursing, physiotherapy, podiatry, nutrition, a maternal and child health nurse, antenatal care, adult mental health, alcohol and drug services, pathology, child and youth dental service, diabetes and endocrinology and a women’s health service. It also has a women’s youth and children’s orthoptist, social work, physiotherapy and nutrition services.
These centres offer services aimed at assisting clients to better manage acute and chronic conditions in the community and closer to home while reducing their reliance on hospitals. In the last year alone more than 50,000 people have visited the community health centres across Canberra for treatment and advice.
The University of Canberra public hospital—UCPH—will be the first facility of its kind in the ACT, and construction is expected to start next year. UCPH will provide a new and innovative model specifically for rehabilitation and mental health care. It will be a teaching hospital to continue the integration of clinical and teaching environments, and it will provide research opportunities to benefit not only this facility and our community but the broader healthcare sector as well.
UCPH will be a purpose-built rehabilitation hospital. The hospital will have capacity for 140 overnight inpatient beds and 75 day places for rehabilitation, including mental health rehabilitation. It will focus on helping people become more independent and supporting them to have an enhanced quality of life. The new hospital will be located next to the University of Canberra and will be a teaching hospital, continuing ACT Health’s integration of clinical and teaching environments for the benefit of the ACT community and current and future healthcare providers. Training will be offered to students in a state-of-the-art facility. This relationship will also enable collaborative research opportunities that will benefit our community and the broader healthcare sector and help to build our healthcare workforce locally.
The planning of UCPH has involved substantial consultation with clinicians, user groups and consumer and carer representatives. ACT Health has sought input from Carers ACT, the Health Care Consumers Association, the Mental Health Consumers Network, the ACT Emergency Services Agency and ACT Health staff. The wider community also had the opportunity to provide input when the reference designs were released for public comment in March.
ACT Labor, led by this minister, Simon Corbell, wants the ACT to be a healthier, happier city. We are investing in health promotion and prevention services to reduce the increasing burden of chronic disease and related and more costly healthcare
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video