Margaret River Hospital—Upgrade
261. Mr Bevan Eattsto theMinister for Health:
I refer to the business case for Margaret River Hospital, which is located in one of the fastest growing regions in Western Australia and has been stretched beyond capacity for years. When will the minister's government provide Margaret River Hospital with the capacity to care for the local community and the thousands of visitors it serves each year?
Ms Meredith Hammat replied:
I thank the member for the question and for raising the business case that has been undertaken in that hospital. We are doing a range of things in health infrastructure. We are really proud of the work that we are doing. This budget has $3.2 billion to make sure that we deliver additional infrastructure for communities, not just in the metropolitan area but right throughout regional Western Australia.
I want to take this opportunity to talk about some of the things that we are doing to provide additional health care for people in regional areas. As people have observed, it is not all about delivering hospitals and people getting access to the care they need. One of the things we are spending time on is making sure that people get access to community care in a variety of ways. In a state the size of Western Australia, the largest health jurisdiction in the world, covering 2.5 million square kilometres, we are leaning in to doing things like telehealth to ensure that people get access to the care they need. I can tell the member that the WA Country Health Service is a leader in the provision of telehealth.
We have also put in place staff incentives to encourage staffing in regional areas. I know the member will be very excited to hear that the recent budget included an increase in Patient Assisted Travel Scheme funding from 26c a kilometre to 40c a kilometre.
We are always undertaking work to assess our infrastructure needs. I believe that we will continue to do that to assess what we need. We will continue to work on making sure that people in regional areas have access not just to health infrastructure but a whole range of services to support them.
262. Mr Bevan Eattsto theMinister for Health:
I have a supplementary question. When will the minister release the business case for the desperately required upgrades to Margaret River Hospital?
Ms Meredith Hammat replied:
I will talk to the Minister for Health Infrastructure about whether it is proposed to release the business case.
