Better health services for all

The Keneally Government is working to ensure NSW maintains its world class health system. This includes:

  • upgrading NSW hospitals, including those in rural and regional areas, to ensure first class healthcare for our community

  • reducing emergency department waiting times to treat people as quickly as possible

  • reducing waiting times for elective surgery

  • ensuring our nurses and doctors have the best training and spend more time on patients, not paperwork

 

We are currently investing $15.1 billion each year on healthcare for our community. This represents about 27% of the total NSW Budget. In 2009/10, $117 million was allocated to Caring Together – our response to the Garling Special Commission of Inquiry. Caring Together ensures that patients are at the centre of all health policies with $2.4 billion to be spent over the next four years on rebuilding and improving health facilities, IT, and equipment and a record $4.12 billion will be invested in rural and regional areas of NSW this year alone. This represents about 29% of the health budget. Highlights include:

 

Hospitals

We have upgraded or rebuilt almost every major hospital and emergency department in NSW since coming to office in 1995,.:

  • In 2009/10, $11.9 million we will fund more than 7,900 community-based residential and/or aged care places to transition patients back home or to their care provider.

  • 2,828 more places (beds & bed equivalents) have opened since 2005.

  • We recently opened the $200 million redevelopment of the Newcastle Mater Hospital and the $145 million new Auburn Hospital.

 

We will continue to invest in hospitals through the $973 million redevelopment of Royal North Shore Hospital and $394 million to redevelopment of Liverpool Hospital.

 

Elective/Planned Surgery

  • In 2009/10 we have invested an extra $18.5 million to increase elective surgery places.

  • Across our state the number of patients waiting more that 12 months for elective surgery was cut from 9,940 in Jan 2005 to just 688 in June 2009 – a reduction of 93%.

 

Emergency Department

  • NSW hospitals treat 100% of the most seriously ill within the national benchmark of treatment – which is within 2 minutes (it was 77% when the Opposition was last in government).

 

Ambulance Service

We operate and maintain 1,300 ambulance vehicles in NSW.

  • We will invest $405.8 million in ambulance services in 2009/10. This is $65.3 million more than last year – an increase of approx 19.2%.

  • Numbers of clinical ambulance staff grew from 2,220 in 1995 to 3,587 clinical staff at end June 2009.

  • During 2008/09 there were over 1,119,000 ambulance responses to emergency and non-emergency incidents.