Page 2407 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 30 July 2019
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The ACT government will also increase the timeliness of treatment in ED by adding 12 medical beds at Canberra Hospital in 2019-20 to meet demand for acute inpatient services. The new beds will be added in medicine, surgery and aged care, freeing up places for admission in ED. This builds on the additional 68 beds to be added this year as a result of the government’s investment through the 2018-19 budget.
MRS DUNNE: Minister, what is your plan to bring down the cost of providing hospital services so that they more accurately reflect the national efficient price?
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: I thank Mrs Dunne for the supplementary. I think the timely care strategy is also relevant in relation to this because I do get feedback that what we need is just more beds. But, in fact, we do have a challenge to use the beds that we have more efficiently. That is what timely care is all about: ensuring that those people who need the beds are in them and that those people who do not need the beds are able to be discharged in a timely manner. That is a key part of the timely care strategy.
What we also need to do is better understand the activity that is going on in hospital. There is a significant digital health strategy that, of course, Minister Fitzharris released a couple of months ago and a really significant investment in our data and digital capability to better understand what is happening in our hospitals, to better code what we are doing to ensure that we are tracking our services and the cost of those services appropriately.
MR WALL: Minister, what will you be doing differently and better over the next 15 months in the Health portfolio?
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: I thank Mr Wall for the supplementary, but I would say that I think I am very fortunate to come into the portfolio at a time when Minister Fitzharris has done an incredible amount of work in a wide range of areas, not only in relation to the culture review but in relation to the data issues that I have just touched on and the development of the digital health strategy; in relation to investment where it is needed; and in the planning for the SPIRE centre, the largest single investment, as I understand it, in health services, in a health facility, in the history of self-government.
Minister Fitzharris has done an incredible amount of work in the restructure of health services into the ACT Health Directorate and Canberra Health Services, and ensured that we have two exceptional leaders in Michael De’Ath as the Director-General of ACT Health Directorate and Bernadette McDonald as the CEO of Canberra Health Services. Both of them are working very hard to ensure that they are empowering the leadership teams that they have around them and they are ensuring that those teams are empowering the people under them to deliver excellent health outcomes for the people of the ACT.
I will continue the work that Minister Fitzharris did, focusing on timely care, focusing on ensuring that the culture of our health services continues to improve, and focusing on investment across our health system, territory-wide, where and when we need it, to ensure that Canberrans continue to get excellent health care in this city.
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