Page 3256 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 21 August 2018
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March 2018 marked a point in time when ACT Health staff at all levels stood up and said, “We are proud, and we are committed to delivering the best possible health care to our community.” Significant improvements have been made during this process and all staff should feel rightly proud. The organisational reform will ensure that we continue to see profound improvements in our health system, and we will ensure that our community continues to receive the high quality, safe health care it expects and deserves.
Because we know that as our community grows our community’s changing healthcare needs must be met, this year’s budget continues to invest in our community’s health, spending ACT taxpayer’s money responsibly and sustainably. We will continue to invest in clinical capacity such as additional beds at our hospitals, more nurse-led walk-in centres, more mental health services and a major expansion of hospital in the home.
We will keep investing in our health system as well, planning truly territory-wide health services, leveraging and improving health data, improving health literacy through individual and environmental health literacy, and continuing our focus on prevention. The important work in mental health led and driven by Mr Rattenbury, including the establishment of the office for mental health, will also continue to be a priority.
As I have also outlined above, we will invest in our health workforce by insisting on a positive organisational culture, building leadership capacity and engaging with staff. We will work side by side with our workforce and their representatives to improve access to training and development and ensuring safe staffing levels.
We will find new and exciting ways to support and encourage clinical research and innovation and to leverage the ACT’s unique and rich tertiary sector, especially by deepening our engagement and collaboration with the Australian National University and the University of Canberra.
We will work closely with the primary care sector and strengthen our collaboration for the benefit of patients and their families. And we will continue to work with our valued community sector partners, many of whom not only deliver vital healthcare services but also provide insight and advocacy on behalf of many members of our community.
We do this because we know deeply on this side of the chamber that a person’s health is affected by social and economic conditions, and that is why universal health care is so vital to the health and wellbeing of our community. We know that we must continue to meet our community’s healthcare needs and that the best way we can do this is to invest in a healthcare system that focuses on keeping people healthy and well and supporting them to access health care closer to home and investing in care to keep people out of hospital. This sets us apart from others who seek to cut health services and take a narrow lens about what keeps our community healthy and well.
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