Page 954 - Week 03 - Thursday, 21 March 2019
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deteriorate badly. It has become broken, unworkable, malfunctioning, posed significant health risks and, in some instances, even caught on fire.
In 2015 the government was advised that hospital infrastructure posed a threat to patients and needed to be replaced. Instead the government’s focus, and this minister’s focus, was on a shiny tram, rather than on delivering the primary government service of public health.
An AECOM report in 2015 identified four extreme risks on the hospital campus, and 143 other areas of high risk. The government’s reaction was to implement the UMAHA program to upgrade and maintain health assets. But this funding, whilst it seems significant, and gave her a good headline, is simply fixing things after they have broken rather than funding the prevention measures. The cost to fix a catastrophe is far in excess of that to prevent it in the first place.
On 6 April 2017, nearly two years ago, the switchboard at the hospital caught fire. Sixty patients needed to be evacuated, surgeries were delayed and it took several days for the hospital to become fully functional again. This kind of degradation of resources puts lives at risk, disrupts the schedule of operations in the hospital and adds unnecessary burden to the already clogged surgical lists.
A year ago, the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards reviewed the ACT hospital campus. The council found that 33 core standards were not met. Some of those standards related to governance, for which the minister is wholly responsible. Others related to maintenance, such as HEPA filters, while the extreme risks were in the adult mental health unit, where deadly ligature points were identified.
They found a number of serious ongoing infrastructure and maintenance issues at the hospital. The Centenary Hospital for Women and Children is full. My colleague Mrs Jones has spoken at length about the problems inside maternity services. The medical paediatric ward at the Canberra Centenary hospital was closed for four months due to plumbing issues. The adult mental health unit has been over capacity for at least two years. The continued need to remove the deadly ligature points at the adult mental health unit has resulted in a reduction in capacity. This issue has been highlighted by both the opposition and Ms Le Couteur; likewise the issue of people being released from the adult mental health ward into homelessness.
A recent freedom of information request has shown that the intensive care unit at the Canberra Hospital was in danger of running out of beds from October this year. What if that were to happen? Members, just think for a moment of the implications if a hospital runs out of space in its intensive care ward. The government is quoted as saying that it is working on a medium-term solution. We have six months to go until October. What is the short-term solution? The medium-term may well and truly be too late for some of those people who require that level of care.
The same documents released under freedom of information have highlighted that the coronary care unit did not meet Australian standards, and it, too, needs to be replaced quickly. An operating theatre at the hospital was out of action for several weeks last year due to mould found in HEPA filters, posing a significant health risk.
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