Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital was “never properly funded”, Health Minister Cameron Dick said, announcing an additional $70 million funding over four years for the headline-plagued hospital.
Already the subject of two reviews, the government has been forced to announce further funding measures after parents and clinicians continued to come forward with issues and concerns regarding the hospital, which was found to have been opened before it was ready.
Mr Dick, who inherited the Labor planned, but LNP delivered site, told parliament the “problems with commissioning and rushed opening of the hospital are well known”.
“The hospital was never properly funded from before the time it opened at the end of November last year,” he said.
“But I have been listening to the ongoing concerns raised by some parents and some clinicians.”
Seeking to address those issues, Mr Dick said a further $20 million a year would be provided for an additional 31 beds, bringing the number of beds available at the hospital to 331, 44 more than the total number of beds available at the old Children’s Hospital and Mater Hospital combined.
“We will start recruiting around 100 extra staff needed to effectively and safely operate these extra beds and deliver these services as soon as possible,” he said.
An additional $5.8 million will be provided for the roll out of integrated electronic patient records systems and an extra $1.3 million a year will be given for “medical retrievals to ensure more sick children needing expert medical care can be retrieved from across the state without having an impact on existing intensive care patients”.
That will allow two intensive care teams can be sent out, instead of one, without impacting the staffing levels at the hospital.
“In its first year of operation the Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital is expected to admit more than 38,000 children as inpatients and see around 190,000 children through outpatient clinics,” Mr Dick said.
“I have faith and complete confidence in hospital staff. The dedicated clinicians at Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital provide world-class treatment. I want Queensland patients to know that we are listening to their concerns and addressing them in a rigorous and systematic way. Queensland children deserve no less.”
But shadow health minister Mark McArdle said the government had “sat on its hands” and was yet to take responsibility for the planning issues which arose under Labor when Peter Beattie announced the hospital in 2006.
“This is not a new issue,” he said.
“…At the end of the day, there is no vision, there is no planning, nor understanding that this hospital is here to help and heal sick children.”
That saw Treasurer Curtis Pitt jump up to defend Mr Dick ‘reminding’ the chamber that the hospital was delivered under the LNP’s “stewardship” and its ultimate control.