A healthy Queensland

We want to make Queenslanders the healthiest people in Australia, by tackling preventable illness now to safeguard our health and providing access to first-class hospital, health care and ambulance services.

Our task is made more challenging by a growing, ageing and geographically diverse population. We are responding with a record $8.3 billion health budget this financial year – a 17 per cent increase on the previous year and well above population growth of 1.7 per cent over the same period.

Hospitals

• Building and rebuilding hospitals across the state – by investing more than $6 billion.
• Building three major tertiary hospitals simultaneously – at Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast and the Queensland Children’s Hospital.
• Building new regional hospitals – at Cairns, Mackay and Yeppoon.
• Expanding or developing – Townsville Hospital ($84 million), Yeppoon Hospital ($21.5 million), Rockhampton Hospital ($74 million), Bundaberg Hospital ($41.1 million), bed capacity on the Sunshine Coast ($191 million), Prince Charles Hospital ($139.6 million) and Robina Hospital ($240 million).
• New or upgraded emergency departments – Cairns ($11.1 million), Townsville ($10 million), Bundaberg ($11 million), Redcliffe ($27.5 million), Princess Alexandra ($52 million), Logan ($7.5 million), Redlands ($7 million) and Robina ($42 million). This will help us deliver on our commitment to fund an extra 1046 acute care hospital beds across Queensland – with an extra $215.13 million investment this financial year.
• Building new community health facilities – at Browns Plains, Northlakes, Sunshine Coast and Robina.
• Invested an extra $82.6 million over four years – for 140 new mental health inpatient beds and launched a new Victim Support Service, the centrepiece of our $53 million suite of reforms to better support the victims of crimes committed by people with a mental illness.

Tackling elective surgery waiting lists

• Providing a record number of elective surgeries – 32,400 Queenslanders received treatment in the three months to June this year, an increase of more than 31 per cent over the last ten years.
• Investing more in elective surgery – $50 million this year, building on $50 million last year, to help meet growing demand.
• Treating more elective surgery patients through a $10.6 million investment in Surgery Connect – using private facilities to help clear the elective surgery waiting lists.
• Treating an extra 540 children on long wait lists over the next six months – with an extra $1.79 million dedicated to Surgery Connect for this purpose.
• Opened new elective surgery centres – at Redcliffe and Caboolture and at Allamanda Private Hospital on the Gold Coast.
• Building a new elective surgery centre – a $100 million dedicated centre at QEII.
• Building new theatres at Ipswich, Nambour and Royal Brisbane Women’s Hospital – a total investment of $13 million to treat a total of 1,800 more elective surgery patients each year.

Maternity and baby services

• Opened the new $188 million Mater Mothers’ Hospital – providing more beds, improved services and more clinical staff. This hospital, the busiest maternity facility in the Southern Hemisphere, marks a new era of maternity health care.
• Delivered better maternity care to more regional mothers – providing access to one-on-one midwifery support from conception to post-birth at Charleville, Logan and Ipswich. This is the start of a $9 million program to support and expand midwifery services in regional Queensland.
• Helping all parents with care for their newborn babies – through a $3.5 million expansion of the telephone advice service, 13HEALTH, to provide around the clock advice to the parents and a commitment for six new drop-in clinics for babies up to 18 months at Cairns, Townsville, Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast, Logan and Toowoomba.
• Opening a new $7 million Queensland Centre for Mothers and Babies – to provide up-to-date information and resources for mothers, babies and their clinicians.
• Delivering hearing tests for all newborns – a $22 million screening program to check all newborn babies for potential hearing difficulties in all birthing hospitals across the State.
• Reviewing surrogacy laws – an all-party parliamentary committee is considering whether to decriminalise altruistic surrogacy and will report to State Parliament.

Australia’s healthiest people

• Marked the midway point of the $10 billion Health Action Plan – which has delivered 5,200 nurses, 1,600 doctors, and 1,900 allied health workers such as radiographers and physiotherapists.
• Set bold new targets to help Queenslanders become Australia’s healthiest people – with a plan that identifies five key challenges and targets for our health system and our community.
• Established a new annual state-wide $1.6 million Healthiest Community Awards – with categories for the healthiest towns, workplaces and schools.
• Regulated major cosmetic surgery for children and teenagers – banning major surgery for purely cosmetic reasons and the use of solaria.
• Protecting Queenslanders’ teeth by fluoridating the state’s drinking water – from the end of 2008 with 90 per cent of Queenslanders having access to fluoridated drinking water by 2012.
• Considering a ban on junk food advertising to children – by asking Queenslanders to have their say about the effects of junk food advertising in television programs aimed at children.
• Toughened smoking laws – to prohibit smoking in cars with children and to give local councils the power to ban smoking in malls and at public transport stops.
• Helping our school children to be sun-safe – by making it compulsory for primary students to wear sunshirts during swimming lessons and high school students to wear sunscreen.
• Delivering greater access to breast screening services for regional women – through the investment of $12.25 million to phase in digital mammography equipment at 11 sites starting this year at Townsville, Mackay, Bundaberg, Toowoomba and South Brisbane.
• Considering ways to increase organ donations – via an all-party parliamentary committee which is due to report 28 October 2008.
• Encouraged research involving embryonic stem cells – by passing new laws, potentially leading to the discovery of important medical cures.
• Making a record $1 billion investment in emergency services – which will deliver 250 extra ambulance officers and 145 new ambulance vehicles.
• Building and rebuilding ambulance stations and facilities – a record investment of $160.6 million will deliver the Queensland Emergency Operations Centre two new ambulance stations and 21 replacement, refurbished or redeveloped ambulance stations, three new fire stations and 11 replacement or redeveloped fire stations.

Accountability

• Cutting bureaucracy and delivering more patient services – by abolishing Area Health Services and Districts, cutting management and communications positions and redirecting savings to children’s elective surgery.
• Further strengthened the independent patient watchdog – by the establishment of an all-party parliamentary committee for the Health Quality and Complaints Commission.

Last updated Monday, February 09, 2009

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