Page 2141 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 5 June 2019
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The government is committed to delivering safe and effective care through an integrated and territory-wide health system, with the appropriate infrastructure to meet the future health needs of the ACT. What this means is a health system that keeps people as healthy and as well as they can be—a system that is easy to understand, meets the needs of the community and, where possible, prevents people coming to hospital. But if they need to visit our health facilities they can visit them closer to home or indeed in one of our acute public hospitals.
I am very proud to have overseen the delivery of a range of new health infrastructure projects in this term of government alone since 2016: the new University of Canberra Hospital, the region’s first public rehabilitation hospital; a new walk-in centre at Gungahlin, with construction underway for a new walk-in centre in Weston Creek; the Dhulwa secure mental health unit, which was opened in 2016; the emergency department expansion at Canberra Hospital; the Ngunnawal Bush Healing Farm; upgrades to Calvary Hospital; contributions to new bulk-billing GP clinics in Tuggeranong and the Molonglo Valley; a significant program of upgrades at the Canberra Hospital, including the upgrade to the acute aged-care ward and the ongoing work to deliver an upgraded oncology ward; and, indeed, a very important grant to Winnunga Nimmityjah Aboriginal Health and Community Services for a significant expansion of that wonderful primary care facility servicing not only the needs of Canberra and the region’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population but many local residents as well. All in all, the government has provided already $525 million in health infrastructure over the past three years.
Planning and design work is well underway for major developments at the Canberra Hospital. The government has made a commitment to a significant investment in the SPIRE centre at Canberra Hospital. Indeed, our original budget was $500 million for this investment and in this week’s budget papers—as Mrs Dunne noted, it is not for publication—the Chief Minister and I have been clear that with the improvements and expansion of the scope we are likely to spend more, but we do not want to condition the market. We will be fully transparent about the cost of the SPIRE development once that commercial process has taken its course, which is not uncommon government practice.
The SPIRE centre will transform the Canberra Hospital campus and greatly increase the health system’s capacity to meet growing demand for acute, emergency and complex healthcare services. Following extensive clinical consultation, which continues, the government has endorsed an expanded scope for SPIRE. I was very pleased to announce in this budget our commitment to future-proofing Canberra’s emergency and acute healthcare services.
The new SPIRE centre will include 114 ED treatment spaces, 39 more than are currently available; 60 intensive care unit beds, doubling the number currently available; and within the new ICU there will be four paediatric ICU beds, a family zone to provide support services for families, particularly those of unwell children. SPIRE will also deliver 22 new state-of-the-art operating theatres, nine more than are currently available and two more than our original commitment, including hybrid theatres, as well as interventional radiology that will support the most advanced medical technology and techniques in caring for Canberrans and people in the region.
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