❓ The Minister for Health provides an update on the progress of new after-hours bulk-billing medical centres and their impact on hospital emergency departments, highlighting positive outcomes and related investments in healthcare.
AnsweredQoN 296Legislative Assembly
QuestionView source ↗
Mr Speaker, if I might have your indulgence for a moment, I would like to say hello to the children who have travelled from Fitzroy Crossing. They have had a long journey. [Applause.] Mr A.D. McRAE: On Sunday, 30 May, two new after-hours bulk-billing medical centres opened for business, one adjacent to Royal Perth Hospital and the other next to Fremantle Hospital. Will the minister tell us about the progress and the development in the past few days of those after-hours clinics and what impact they will have on the emergency departments of the adjacent hospitals? Mr J.A. McGINTY
AnswerView source ↗
I am very pleased to respond to the question from the member for Riverton. On Sunday last the general practitioner bulk-billing clinics associated with the emergency departments at Royal Perth Hospital and Fremantle Hospital opened for business. On that day between the two of them they saw 44 patients. The nature of the illnesses that they dealt with included soft tissue injuries, acute gastritis, nausea, earache, loin pain and others such as lacerations and sprains. There were also flu-related illnesses. I am delighted that these clinics, which are a joint endeavour between the State and Commonwealth Governments, are achieving exactly what we wanted them to achieve, which is to take low acuity patients out of the emergency departments and to provide more timely and appropriate treatment rather than leaving those people sitting, as they would have done, in the emergency departments for four, five or six hours before they received treatment. The Commonwealth is playing its role by making a $200 000 contribution towards the setting up of these clinics as well as agreeing to accept bulk-billing under Medicare. In the next month and a half, extended-hours operations will open at both the Joondalup Health Campus and the Rockingham-Kwinana District Hospital to service people in the outer metropolitan areas. So far, so good. After three days, 59 patients have passed through those clinics. I know from having spoken to the triage nurses at the emergency departments that we have some very happy triage nurses who are able to offer people immediate treatment. This is one cog in the whole wheel of what it is we are trying to do to make our emergency departments operate better. There is no doubt that a public gauge of the performance of our public hospital system is the performance of its emergency departments. So far this year we have allocated $20 million to open an extra 332 hospital beds across metropolitan hospitals. As of Monday, 31 May, 219 of those beds were already open. We have also spent $22 million on upgrading hospital emergency departments, particularly at Rockingham-Kwinana District Hospital and Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. We have also allocated for the next five years $34.7 million to St John Ambulance Australia for it to put more ambulances on the road and employ 100 more ambulance officers. The success of our recruitment program among nurses has seen 1 125 more full-time salaried nurses employed in public hospitals since we came to government. I am delighted to be able to report to the House that the combined effect of those initiatives for the emergency departments is delivering some demonstrable improvements in their operation. During 2003 the number of hours a month spent on ambulance diversion were 230 hours in March, 225 in April and 231 in May. The effect of implementing these policies over the past six to eight weeks has been that in March of this year the performance was similar to that of last year, which was 251 hours spent on diversion. In April, when the policies cut in, that figure halved to 105 hours and in May it fell to 51 hours. The rate of ambulance diversion in Western Australia last month was only 22 per cent of what it was in the same month last year. It is early days, and we can never be confident in emergency medicine that what we are doing is guaranteed to deliver exactly what we want. However, on those indicators to date, focusing our attention on what needs to be done in the emergency departments has taken pressure off the system in a very demonstrable way.
[Applause.] Mr A.D. McRAE: On Sunday, 30 May, two new after-hours bulk-billing medical centres opened for business, one adjacent to Royal Perth Hospital and the other next to Fremantle Hospital. Will the minister tell us about the progress and the development in the past few days of those after-hours clinics and what impact they will have on the emergency departments of the adjacent hospitals? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I am very pleased to respond to the question from the member for Riverton. On Sunday last the general practitioner bulk-billing clinics associated with the emergency departments at Royal Perth Hospital and Fremantle Hospital opened for business. On that day between the two of them they saw 44 patients. The nature of the illnesses that they dealt with included soft tissue injuries, acute gastritis, nausea, earache, loin pain and others such as lacerations and sprains. There were also flu-related illnesses. I am delighted that these clinics, which are a joint endeavour between the State and Commonwealth Governments, are achieving exactly what we wanted them to achieve, which is to take low acuity patients out of the emergency departments and to provide more timely and appropriate treatment rather than leaving those people sitting, as they would have done, in the emergency departments for four, five or six hours before they received treatment. The Commonwealth is playing its role by making a $200 000 contribution towards the setting up of these clinics as well as agreeing to accept bulk-billing under Medicare. In the next month and a half, extended-hours operations will open at both the Joondalup Health Campus and the Rockingham-Kwinana District Hospital to service people in the outer metropolitan areas. So far, so good. After three days, 59 patients have passed through those clinics. I know from having spoken to the triage nurses at the emergency departments that we have some very happy triage nurses who are able to offer people immediate treatment. This is one cog in the whole wheel of what it is we are trying to do to make our emergency departments operate better. There is no doubt that a public gauge of the performance of our public hospital system is the performance of its emergency departments. So far this year we have allocated $20 million to open an extra 332 hospital beds across metropolitan hospitals. As of Monday, 31 May, 219 of those beds were already open. We have also spent $22 million on upgrading hospital emergency departments, particularly at Rockingham-Kwinana District Hospital and Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. We have also allocated for the next five years $34.7 million to St John Ambulance Australia for it to put more ambulances on the road and employ 100 more ambulance officers. The success of our recruitment program among nurses has seen 1 125 more full-time salaried nurses employed in public hospitals since we came to government. I am delighted to be able to report to the House that the combined effect of those initiatives for the emergency departments is delivering some demonstrable improvements in their operation. During 2003 the number of hours a month spent on ambulance diversion were 230 hours in March, 225 in April and 231 in May. The effect of implementing these policies over the past six to eight weeks has been that in March of this year the performance was similar to that of last year, which was 251 hours spent on diversion. In April, when the policies cut in, that figure halved to 105 hours and in May it fell to 51 hours. The rate of ambulance diversion in Western Australia last month was only 22 per cent of what it was in the same month last year. It is early days, and we can never be confident in emergency medicine that what we are doing is guaranteed to deliver exactly what we want. However, on those indicators to date, focusing our attention on what needs to be done in the emergency departments has taken pressure off the system in a very demonstrable way.
Mr A.D. McRAE: On Sunday, 30 May, two new after-hours bulk-billing medical centres opened for business, one adjacent to Royal Perth Hospital and the other next to Fremantle Hospital. Will the minister tell us about the progress and the development in the past few days of those after-hours clinics and what impact they will have on the emergency departments of the adjacent hospitals? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I am very pleased to respond to the question from the member for Riverton. On Sunday last the general practitioner bulk-billing clinics associated with the emergency departments at Royal Perth Hospital and Fremantle Hospital opened for business. On that day between the two of them they saw 44 patients. The nature of the illnesses that they dealt with included soft tissue injuries, acute gastritis, nausea, earache, loin pain and others such as lacerations and sprains. There were also flu-related illnesses. I am delighted that these clinics, which are a joint endeavour between the State and Commonwealth Governments, are achieving exactly what we wanted them to achieve, which is to take low acuity patients out of the emergency departments and to provide more timely and appropriate treatment rather than leaving those people sitting, as they would have done, in the emergency departments for four, five or six hours before they received treatment. The Commonwealth is playing its role by making a $200 000 contribution towards the setting up of these clinics as well as agreeing to accept bulk-billing under Medicare. In the next month and a half, extended-hours operations will open at both the Joondalup Health Campus and the Rockingham-Kwinana District Hospital to service people in the outer metropolitan areas. So far, so good. After three days, 59 patients have passed through those clinics. I know from having spoken to the triage nurses at the emergency departments that we have some very happy triage nurses who are able to offer people immediate treatment. This is one cog in the whole wheel of what it is we are trying to do to make our emergency departments operate better. There is no doubt that a public gauge of the performance of our public hospital system is the performance of its emergency departments. So far this year we have allocated $20 million to open an extra 332 hospital beds across metropolitan hospitals. As of Monday, 31 May, 219 of those beds were already open. We have also spent $22 million on upgrading hospital emergency departments, particularly at Rockingham-Kwinana District Hospital and Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. We have also allocated for the next five years $34.7 million to St John Ambulance Australia for it to put more ambulances on the road and employ 100 more ambulance officers. The success of our recruitment program among nurses has seen 1 125 more full-time salaried nurses employed in public hospitals since we came to government. I am delighted to be able to report to the House that the combined effect of those initiatives for the emergency departments is delivering some demonstrable improvements in their operation. During 2003 the number of hours a month spent on ambulance diversion were 230 hours in March, 225 in April and 231 in May. The effect of implementing these policies over the past six to eight weeks has been that in March of this year the performance was similar to that of last year, which was 251 hours spent on diversion. In April, when the policies cut in, that figure halved to 105 hours and in May it fell to 51 hours. The rate of ambulance diversion in Western Australia last month was only 22 per cent of what it was in the same month last year. It is early days, and we can never be confident in emergency medicine that what we are doing is guaranteed to deliver exactly what we want. However, on those indicators to date, focusing our attention on what needs to be done in the emergency departments has taken pressure off the system in a very demonstrable way.
Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I am very pleased to respond to the question from the member for Riverton. On Sunday last the general practitioner bulk-billing clinics associated with the emergency departments at Royal Perth Hospital and Fremantle Hospital opened for business. On that day between the two of them they saw 44 patients. The nature of the illnesses that they dealt with included soft tissue injuries, acute gastritis, nausea, earache, loin pain and others such as lacerations and sprains. There were also flu-related illnesses. I am delighted that these clinics, which are a joint endeavour between the State and Commonwealth Governments, are achieving exactly what we wanted them to achieve, which is to take low acuity patients out of the emergency departments and to provide more timely and appropriate treatment rather than leaving those people sitting, as they would have done, in the emergency departments for four, five or six hours before they received treatment. The Commonwealth is playing its role by making a $200 000 contribution towards the setting up of these clinics as well as agreeing to accept bulk-billing under Medicare. In the next month and a half, extended-hours operations will open at both the Joondalup Health Campus and the Rockingham-Kwinana District Hospital to service people in the outer metropolitan areas. So far, so good. After three days, 59 patients have passed through those clinics. I know from having spoken to the triage nurses at the emergency departments that we have some very happy triage nurses who are able to offer people immediate treatment. This is one cog in the whole wheel of what it is we are trying to do to make our emergency departments operate better. There is no doubt that a public gauge of the performance of our public hospital system is the performance of its emergency departments. So far this year we have allocated $20 million to open an extra 332 hospital beds across metropolitan hospitals. As of Monday, 31 May, 219 of those beds were already open. We have also spent $22 million on upgrading hospital emergency departments, particularly at Rockingham-Kwinana District Hospital and Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. We have also allocated for the next five years $34.7 million to St John Ambulance Australia for it to put more ambulances on the road and employ 100 more ambulance officers. The success of our recruitment program among nurses has seen 1 125 more full-time salaried nurses employed in public hospitals since we came to government. I am delighted to be able to report to the House that the combined effect of those initiatives for the emergency departments is delivering some demonstrable improvements in their operation. During 2003 the number of hours a month spent on ambulance diversion were 230 hours in March, 225 in April and 231 in May. The effect of implementing these policies over the past six to eight weeks has been that in March of this year the performance was similar to that of last year, which was 251 hours spent on diversion. In April, when the policies cut in, that figure halved to 105 hours and in May it fell to 51 hours. The rate of ambulance diversion in Western Australia last month was only 22 per cent of what it was in the same month last year. It is early days, and we can never be confident in emergency medicine that what we are doing is guaranteed to deliver exactly what we want. However, on those indicators to date, focusing our attention on what needs to be done in the emergency departments has taken pressure off the system in a very demonstrable way.
I am very pleased to respond to the question from the member for Riverton. On Sunday last the general practitioner bulk-billing clinics associated with the emergency departments at Royal Perth Hospital and Fremantle Hospital opened for business. On that day between the two of them they saw 44 patients. The nature of the illnesses that they dealt with included soft tissue injuries, acute gastritis, nausea, earache, loin pain and others such as lacerations and sprains. There were also flu-related illnesses. I am delighted that these clinics, which are a joint endeavour between the State and Commonwealth Governments, are achieving exactly what we wanted them to achieve, which is to take low acuity patients out of the emergency departments and to provide more timely and appropriate treatment rather than leaving those people sitting, as they would have done, in the emergency departments for four, five or six hours before they received treatment. The Commonwealth is playing its role by making a $200 000 contribution towards the setting up of these clinics as well as agreeing to accept bulk-billing under Medicare. In the next month and a half, extended-hours operations will open at both the Joondalup Health Campus and the Rockingham-Kwinana District Hospital to service people in the outer metropolitan areas. So far, so good. After three days, 59 patients have passed through those clinics. I know from having spoken to the triage nurses at the emergency departments that we have some very happy triage nurses who are able to offer people immediate treatment. This is one cog in the whole wheel of what it is we are trying to do to make our emergency departments operate better. There is no doubt that a public gauge of the performance of our public hospital system is the performance of its emergency departments. So far this year we have allocated $20 million to open an extra 332 hospital beds across metropolitan hospitals. As of Monday, 31 May, 219 of those beds were already open. We have also spent $22 million on upgrading hospital emergency departments, particularly at Rockingham-Kwinana District Hospital and Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. We have also allocated for the next five years $34.7 million to St John Ambulance Australia for it to put more ambulances on the road and employ 100 more ambulance officers. The success of our recruitment program among nurses has seen 1 125 more full-time salaried nurses employed in public hospitals since we came to government. I am delighted to be able to report to the House that the combined effect of those initiatives for the emergency departments is delivering some demonstrable improvements in their operation. During 2003 the number of hours a month spent on ambulance diversion were 230 hours in March, 225 in April and 231 in May. The effect of implementing these policies over the past six to eight weeks has been that in March of this year the performance was similar to that of last year, which was 251 hours spent on diversion. In April, when the policies cut in, that figure halved to 105 hours and in May it fell to 51 hours. The rate of ambulance diversion in Western Australia last month was only 22 per cent of what it was in the same month last year. It is early days, and we can never be confident in emergency medicine that what we are doing is guaranteed to deliver exactly what we want. However, on those indicators to date, focusing our attention on what needs to be done in the emergency departments has taken pressure off the system in a very demonstrable way.
The Commonwealth is playing its role by making a $200 000 contribution towards the setting up of these clinics as well as agreeing to accept bulk-billing under Medicare. In the next month and a half, extended-hours operations will open at both the Joondalup Health Campus and the Rockingham-Kwinana District Hospital to service people in the outer metropolitan areas. So far, so good. After three days, 59 patients have passed through those clinics. I know from having spoken to the triage nurses at the emergency departments that we have some very happy triage nurses who are able to offer people immediate treatment. This is one cog in the whole wheel of what it is we are trying to do to make our emergency departments operate better. There is no doubt that a public gauge of the performance of our public hospital system is the performance of its emergency departments. So far this year we have allocated $20 million to open an extra 332 hospital beds across metropolitan hospitals. As of Monday, 31 May, 219 of those beds were already open. We have also spent $22 million on upgrading hospital emergency departments, particularly at Rockingham-Kwinana District Hospital and Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. We have also allocated for the next five years $34.7 million to St John Ambulance Australia for it to put more ambulances on the road and employ 100 more ambulance officers. The success of our recruitment program among nurses has seen 1 125 more full-time salaried nurses employed in public hospitals since we came to government. I am delighted to be able to report to the House that the combined effect of those initiatives for the emergency departments is delivering some demonstrable improvements in their operation. During 2003 the number of hours a month spent on ambulance diversion were 230 hours in March, 225 in April and 231 in May. The effect of implementing these policies over the past six to eight weeks has been that in March of this year the performance was similar to that of last year, which was 251 hours spent on diversion. In April, when the policies cut in, that figure halved to 105 hours and in May it fell to 51 hours. The rate of ambulance diversion in Western Australia last month was only 22 per cent of what it was in the same month last year. It is early days, and we can never be confident in emergency medicine that what we are doing is guaranteed to deliver exactly what we want. However, on those indicators to date, focusing our attention on what needs to be done in the emergency departments has taken pressure off the system in a very demonstrable way.
This is one cog in the whole wheel of what it is we are trying to do to make our emergency departments operate better. There is no doubt that a public gauge of the performance of our public hospital system is the performance of its emergency departments. So far this year we have allocated $20 million to open an extra 332 hospital beds across metropolitan hospitals. As of Monday, 31 May, 219 of those beds were already open. We have also spent $22 million on upgrading hospital emergency departments, particularly at Rockingham-Kwinana District Hospital and Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. We have also allocated for the next five years $34.7 million to St John Ambulance Australia for it to put more ambulances on the road and employ 100 more ambulance officers. The success of our recruitment program among nurses has seen 1 125 more full-time salaried nurses employed in public hospitals since we came to government. I am delighted to be able to report to the House that the combined effect of those initiatives for the emergency departments is delivering some demonstrable improvements in their operation. During 2003 the number of hours a month spent on ambulance diversion were 230 hours in March, 225 in April and 231 in May. The effect of implementing these policies over the past six to eight weeks has been that in March of this year the performance was similar to that of last year, which was 251 hours spent on diversion. In April, when the policies cut in, that figure halved to 105 hours and in May it fell to 51 hours. The rate of ambulance diversion in Western Australia last month was only 22 per cent of what it was in the same month last year. It is early days, and we can never be confident in emergency medicine that what we are doing is guaranteed to deliver exactly what we want. However, on those indicators to date, focusing our attention on what needs to be done in the emergency departments has taken pressure off the system in a very demonstrable way.
I am delighted to be able to report to the House that the combined effect of those initiatives for the emergency departments is delivering some demonstrable improvements in their operation. During 2003 the number of hours a month spent on ambulance diversion were 230 hours in March, 225 in April and 231 in May. The effect of implementing these policies over the past six to eight weeks has been that in March of this year the performance was similar to that of last year, which was 251 hours spent on diversion. In April, when the policies cut in, that figure halved to 105 hours and in May it fell to 51 hours. The rate of ambulance diversion in Western Australia last month was only 22 per cent of what it was in the same month last year. It is early days, and we can never be confident in emergency medicine that what we are doing is guaranteed to deliver exactly what we want. However, on those indicators to date, focusing our attention on what needs to be done in the emergency departments has taken pressure off the system in a very demonstrable way.
[Applause.] Mr A.D. McRAE: On Sunday, 30 May, two new after-hours bulk-billing medical centres opened for business, one adjacent to Royal Perth Hospital and the other next to Fremantle Hospital. Will the minister tell us about the progress and the development in the past few days of those after-hours clinics and what impact they will have on the emergency departments of the adjacent hospitals? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I am very pleased to respond to the question from the member for Riverton. On Sunday last the general practitioner bulk-billing clinics associated with the emergency departments at Royal Perth Hospital and Fremantle Hospital opened for business. On that day between the two of them they saw 44 patients. The nature of the illnesses that they dealt with included soft tissue injuries, acute gastritis, nausea, earache, loin pain and others such as lacerations and sprains. There were also flu-related illnesses. I am delighted that these clinics, which are a joint endeavour between the State and Commonwealth Governments, are achieving exactly what we wanted them to achieve, which is to take low acuity patients out of the emergency departments and to provide more timely and appropriate treatment rather than leaving those people sitting, as they would have done, in the emergency departments for four, five or six hours before they received treatment. The Commonwealth is playing its role by making a $200 000 contribution towards the setting up of these clinics as well as agreeing to accept bulk-billing under Medicare. In the next month and a half, extended-hours operations will open at both the Joondalup Health Campus and the Rockingham-Kwinana District Hospital to service people in the outer metropolitan areas. So far, so good. After three days, 59 patients have passed through those clinics. I know from having spoken to the triage nurses at the emergency departments that we have some very happy triage nurses who are able to offer people immediate treatment. This is one cog in the whole wheel of what it is we are trying to do to make our emergency departments operate better. There is no doubt that a public gauge of the performance of our public hospital system is the performance of its emergency departments. So far this year we have allocated $20 million to open an extra 332 hospital beds across metropolitan hospitals. As of Monday, 31 May, 219 of those beds were already open. We have also spent $22 million on upgrading hospital emergency departments, particularly at Rockingham-Kwinana District Hospital and Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. We have also allocated for the next five years $34.7 million to St John Ambulance Australia for it to put more ambulances on the road and employ 100 more ambulance officers. The success of our recruitment program among nurses has seen 1 125 more full-time salaried nurses employed in public hospitals since we came to government. I am delighted to be able to report to the House that the combined effect of those initiatives for the emergency departments is delivering some demonstrable improvements in their operation. During 2003 the number of hours a month spent on ambulance diversion were 230 hours in March, 225 in April and 231 in May. The effect of implementing these policies over the past six to eight weeks has been that in March of this year the performance was similar to that of last year, which was 251 hours spent on diversion. In April, when the policies cut in, that figure halved to 105 hours and in May it fell to 51 hours. The rate of ambulance diversion in Western Australia last month was only 22 per cent of what it was in the same month last year. It is early days, and we can never be confident in emergency medicine that what we are doing is guaranteed to deliver exactly what we want. However, on those indicators to date, focusing our attention on what needs to be done in the emergency departments has taken pressure off the system in a very demonstrable way.
Mr A.D. McRAE: On Sunday, 30 May, two new after-hours bulk-billing medical centres opened for business, one adjacent to Royal Perth Hospital and the other next to Fremantle Hospital. Will the minister tell us about the progress and the development in the past few days of those after-hours clinics and what impact they will have on the emergency departments of the adjacent hospitals? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I am very pleased to respond to the question from the member for Riverton. On Sunday last the general practitioner bulk-billing clinics associated with the emergency departments at Royal Perth Hospital and Fremantle Hospital opened for business. On that day between the two of them they saw 44 patients. The nature of the illnesses that they dealt with included soft tissue injuries, acute gastritis, nausea, earache, loin pain and others such as lacerations and sprains. There were also flu-related illnesses. I am delighted that these clinics, which are a joint endeavour between the State and Commonwealth Governments, are achieving exactly what we wanted them to achieve, which is to take low acuity patients out of the emergency departments and to provide more timely and appropriate treatment rather than leaving those people sitting, as they would have done, in the emergency departments for four, five or six hours before they received treatment. The Commonwealth is playing its role by making a $200 000 contribution towards the setting up of these clinics as well as agreeing to accept bulk-billing under Medicare. In the next month and a half, extended-hours operations will open at both the Joondalup Health Campus and the Rockingham-Kwinana District Hospital to service people in the outer metropolitan areas. So far, so good. After three days, 59 patients have passed through those clinics. I know from having spoken to the triage nurses at the emergency departments that we have some very happy triage nurses who are able to offer people immediate treatment. This is one cog in the whole wheel of what it is we are trying to do to make our emergency departments operate better. There is no doubt that a public gauge of the performance of our public hospital system is the performance of its emergency departments. So far this year we have allocated $20 million to open an extra 332 hospital beds across metropolitan hospitals. As of Monday, 31 May, 219 of those beds were already open. We have also spent $22 million on upgrading hospital emergency departments, particularly at Rockingham-Kwinana District Hospital and Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. We have also allocated for the next five years $34.7 million to St John Ambulance Australia for it to put more ambulances on the road and employ 100 more ambulance officers. The success of our recruitment program among nurses has seen 1 125 more full-time salaried nurses employed in public hospitals since we came to government. I am delighted to be able to report to the House that the combined effect of those initiatives for the emergency departments is delivering some demonstrable improvements in their operation. During 2003 the number of hours a month spent on ambulance diversion were 230 hours in March, 225 in April and 231 in May. The effect of implementing these policies over the past six to eight weeks has been that in March of this year the performance was similar to that of last year, which was 251 hours spent on diversion. In April, when the policies cut in, that figure halved to 105 hours and in May it fell to 51 hours. The rate of ambulance diversion in Western Australia last month was only 22 per cent of what it was in the same month last year. It is early days, and we can never be confident in emergency medicine that what we are doing is guaranteed to deliver exactly what we want. However, on those indicators to date, focusing our attention on what needs to be done in the emergency departments has taken pressure off the system in a very demonstrable way.
Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I am very pleased to respond to the question from the member for Riverton. On Sunday last the general practitioner bulk-billing clinics associated with the emergency departments at Royal Perth Hospital and Fremantle Hospital opened for business. On that day between the two of them they saw 44 patients. The nature of the illnesses that they dealt with included soft tissue injuries, acute gastritis, nausea, earache, loin pain and others such as lacerations and sprains. There were also flu-related illnesses. I am delighted that these clinics, which are a joint endeavour between the State and Commonwealth Governments, are achieving exactly what we wanted them to achieve, which is to take low acuity patients out of the emergency departments and to provide more timely and appropriate treatment rather than leaving those people sitting, as they would have done, in the emergency departments for four, five or six hours before they received treatment. The Commonwealth is playing its role by making a $200 000 contribution towards the setting up of these clinics as well as agreeing to accept bulk-billing under Medicare. In the next month and a half, extended-hours operations will open at both the Joondalup Health Campus and the Rockingham-Kwinana District Hospital to service people in the outer metropolitan areas. So far, so good. After three days, 59 patients have passed through those clinics. I know from having spoken to the triage nurses at the emergency departments that we have some very happy triage nurses who are able to offer people immediate treatment. This is one cog in the whole wheel of what it is we are trying to do to make our emergency departments operate better. There is no doubt that a public gauge of the performance of our public hospital system is the performance of its emergency departments. So far this year we have allocated $20 million to open an extra 332 hospital beds across metropolitan hospitals. As of Monday, 31 May, 219 of those beds were already open. We have also spent $22 million on upgrading hospital emergency departments, particularly at Rockingham-Kwinana District Hospital and Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. We have also allocated for the next five years $34.7 million to St John Ambulance Australia for it to put more ambulances on the road and employ 100 more ambulance officers. The success of our recruitment program among nurses has seen 1 125 more full-time salaried nurses employed in public hospitals since we came to government. I am delighted to be able to report to the House that the combined effect of those initiatives for the emergency departments is delivering some demonstrable improvements in their operation. During 2003 the number of hours a month spent on ambulance diversion were 230 hours in March, 225 in April and 231 in May. The effect of implementing these policies over the past six to eight weeks has been that in March of this year the performance was similar to that of last year, which was 251 hours spent on diversion. In April, when the policies cut in, that figure halved to 105 hours and in May it fell to 51 hours. The rate of ambulance diversion in Western Australia last month was only 22 per cent of what it was in the same month last year. It is early days, and we can never be confident in emergency medicine that what we are doing is guaranteed to deliver exactly what we want. However, on those indicators to date, focusing our attention on what needs to be done in the emergency departments has taken pressure off the system in a very demonstrable way.
I am very pleased to respond to the question from the member for Riverton. On Sunday last the general practitioner bulk-billing clinics associated with the emergency departments at Royal Perth Hospital and Fremantle Hospital opened for business. On that day between the two of them they saw 44 patients. The nature of the illnesses that they dealt with included soft tissue injuries, acute gastritis, nausea, earache, loin pain and others such as lacerations and sprains. There were also flu-related illnesses. I am delighted that these clinics, which are a joint endeavour between the State and Commonwealth Governments, are achieving exactly what we wanted them to achieve, which is to take low acuity patients out of the emergency departments and to provide more timely and appropriate treatment rather than leaving those people sitting, as they would have done, in the emergency departments for four, five or six hours before they received treatment. The Commonwealth is playing its role by making a $200 000 contribution towards the setting up of these clinics as well as agreeing to accept bulk-billing under Medicare. In the next month and a half, extended-hours operations will open at both the Joondalup Health Campus and the Rockingham-Kwinana District Hospital to service people in the outer metropolitan areas. So far, so good. After three days, 59 patients have passed through those clinics. I know from having spoken to the triage nurses at the emergency departments that we have some very happy triage nurses who are able to offer people immediate treatment. This is one cog in the whole wheel of what it is we are trying to do to make our emergency departments operate better. There is no doubt that a public gauge of the performance of our public hospital system is the performance of its emergency departments. So far this year we have allocated $20 million to open an extra 332 hospital beds across metropolitan hospitals. As of Monday, 31 May, 219 of those beds were already open. We have also spent $22 million on upgrading hospital emergency departments, particularly at Rockingham-Kwinana District Hospital and Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. We have also allocated for the next five years $34.7 million to St John Ambulance Australia for it to put more ambulances on the road and employ 100 more ambulance officers. The success of our recruitment program among nurses has seen 1 125 more full-time salaried nurses employed in public hospitals since we came to government. I am delighted to be able to report to the House that the combined effect of those initiatives for the emergency departments is delivering some demonstrable improvements in their operation. During 2003 the number of hours a month spent on ambulance diversion were 230 hours in March, 225 in April and 231 in May. The effect of implementing these policies over the past six to eight weeks has been that in March of this year the performance was similar to that of last year, which was 251 hours spent on diversion. In April, when the policies cut in, that figure halved to 105 hours and in May it fell to 51 hours. The rate of ambulance diversion in Western Australia last month was only 22 per cent of what it was in the same month last year. It is early days, and we can never be confident in emergency medicine that what we are doing is guaranteed to deliver exactly what we want. However, on those indicators to date, focusing our attention on what needs to be done in the emergency departments has taken pressure off the system in a very demonstrable way.
The Commonwealth is playing its role by making a $200 000 contribution towards the setting up of these clinics as well as agreeing to accept bulk-billing under Medicare. In the next month and a half, extended-hours operations will open at both the Joondalup Health Campus and the Rockingham-Kwinana District Hospital to service people in the outer metropolitan areas. So far, so good. After three days, 59 patients have passed through those clinics. I know from having spoken to the triage nurses at the emergency departments that we have some very happy triage nurses who are able to offer people immediate treatment. This is one cog in the whole wheel of what it is we are trying to do to make our emergency departments operate better. There is no doubt that a public gauge of the performance of our public hospital system is the performance of its emergency departments. So far this year we have allocated $20 million to open an extra 332 hospital beds across metropolitan hospitals. As of Monday, 31 May, 219 of those beds were already open. We have also spent $22 million on upgrading hospital emergency departments, particularly at Rockingham-Kwinana District Hospital and Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. We have also allocated for the next five years $34.7 million to St John Ambulance Australia for it to put more ambulances on the road and employ 100 more ambulance officers. The success of our recruitment program among nurses has seen 1 125 more full-time salaried nurses employed in public hospitals since we came to government. I am delighted to be able to report to the House that the combined effect of those initiatives for the emergency departments is delivering some demonstrable improvements in their operation. During 2003 the number of hours a month spent on ambulance diversion were 230 hours in March, 225 in April and 231 in May. The effect of implementing these policies over the past six to eight weeks has been that in March of this year the performance was similar to that of last year, which was 251 hours spent on diversion. In April, when the policies cut in, that figure halved to 105 hours and in May it fell to 51 hours. The rate of ambulance diversion in Western Australia last month was only 22 per cent of what it was in the same month last year. It is early days, and we can never be confident in emergency medicine that what we are doing is guaranteed to deliver exactly what we want. However, on those indicators to date, focusing our attention on what needs to be done in the emergency departments has taken pressure off the system in a very demonstrable way.
This is one cog in the whole wheel of what it is we are trying to do to make our emergency departments operate better. There is no doubt that a public gauge of the performance of our public hospital system is the performance of its emergency departments. So far this year we have allocated $20 million to open an extra 332 hospital beds across metropolitan hospitals. As of Monday, 31 May, 219 of those beds were already open. We have also spent $22 million on upgrading hospital emergency departments, particularly at Rockingham-Kwinana District Hospital and Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. We have also allocated for the next five years $34.7 million to St John Ambulance Australia for it to put more ambulances on the road and employ 100 more ambulance officers. The success of our recruitment program among nurses has seen 1 125 more full-time salaried nurses employed in public hospitals since we came to government. I am delighted to be able to report to the House that the combined effect of those initiatives for the emergency departments is delivering some demonstrable improvements in their operation. During 2003 the number of hours a month spent on ambulance diversion were 230 hours in March, 225 in April and 231 in May. The effect of implementing these policies over the past six to eight weeks has been that in March of this year the performance was similar to that of last year, which was 251 hours spent on diversion. In April, when the policies cut in, that figure halved to 105 hours and in May it fell to 51 hours. The rate of ambulance diversion in Western Australia last month was only 22 per cent of what it was in the same month last year. It is early days, and we can never be confident in emergency medicine that what we are doing is guaranteed to deliver exactly what we want. However, on those indicators to date, focusing our attention on what needs to be done in the emergency departments has taken pressure off the system in a very demonstrable way.
I am delighted to be able to report to the House that the combined effect of those initiatives for the emergency departments is delivering some demonstrable improvements in their operation. During 2003 the number of hours a month spent on ambulance diversion were 230 hours in March, 225 in April and 231 in May. The effect of implementing these policies over the past six to eight weeks has been that in March of this year the performance was similar to that of last year, which was 251 hours spent on diversion. In April, when the policies cut in, that figure halved to 105 hours and in May it fell to 51 hours. The rate of ambulance diversion in Western Australia last month was only 22 per cent of what it was in the same month last year. It is early days, and we can never be confident in emergency medicine that what we are doing is guaranteed to deliver exactly what we want. However, on those indicators to date, focusing our attention on what needs to be done in the emergency departments has taken pressure off the system in a very demonstrable way.
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