Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith and Chief Minister Andrew Barr in one of the new operating theatres at Canberra Hospital. Photo: Ian Bushnell.
The ACT Government will commit $52.7 million from next week’s 2024-25 Budget to getting on top of the Territory’s elective surgery waiting list and meeting its target of 60,000 procedures in this term of government.
Chief Minister Andrew Barr said health would be the centrepiece of the Budget, with about $2.6 billion in funding for 2024-25. Working to make inroads into elective surgery was an important part of that.
He said opening the new Critical Services Building at Canberra Hospital in August, with its greater surgical capacity, would be pivotal.
Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith said the ability to do more elective surgery would come from a combination of increased emergency capacity not bumping elective surgeries, more efficient theatres with their own MRI technology reducing surgery times, and paying for 300 eye cataract procedures in the private sector.
She said the funding would enable a seven-day-a-week surgical operation, including additional twilight and weekend emergency procedures.
Thirteen full-time equivalent theatres will be available in the new building when it opens, while one theatre will stay in the older section of the hospital for obstetric and gynecological work to be near the Women’s and Children’s Hospital.
“But there may be more than 13 physical theatres being used to deliver that capacity,” Ms Stephen-Smith said.
She said the integrated MRI theatre would mean certain types of procedures could happen more quickly because patients would not need to be moved from a theatre to the MRI back to the theatre.
“So it’s not only about the number of theatres that we have, but it’s also about ensuring that those theatres can best be used in the most efficient way so that our surgical teams can get on with the job of actually performing surgery and not having to wait while another surgery pushes out their elective or planned care,” Ms Stephen-Smith said.
She said Canberra Health Services was on track to meet its target of 15,500 elective surgeries this financial year, and the extra capacity would boost that target to 17,000 for 2024-25.
The other factor would be extra staff, including specialists.
The overall health allocation includes funding for 800 more staff, but Ms Stephen-Smith said she would have more to say soon and during the election campaign, specifically about locum specialists and the continued recruitment of staff specialists.
“We are always continuing to recruit, and that will be a combination of staff specialists and visiting medical officers,” she said.
“The reality of the situation, not just in the ACT but across the country, is that we are experiencing shortages across many parts of our health workforce. That does mean that sometimes we need to have locum staff, we need to have agency staff, and we need to have those visiting medical officers as well as our really fantastic staff specialists.”
The Critical Services Building will eventually bring 22 theatres online.
The government says the Budget will also support acute care for older people across the public hospitals, inpatient rehabilitation at the University of Canberra Hospital, services for critically ill newborns and expanded maternity services.
Loading ...
