It’s not entirely clear where the funding will come from, but there is a plan to insource more surgery and cut contract and agency staff in favour of fulltime employees.
The ACT government has committed to pouring an additional $227.3 million into Canberra’s public health system via a second appropriation bill.
Speaking to the Canberra Times, ACT health minister Rachel Stephen-Smith said the government would work between the mid-year budget review and the 2025-26 budget to find more savings across the system.
“We’ve chosen to respond to that [costs crisis] with additional resourcing rather than trying to make short-term drastic cuts to the services we’re delivering,” Ms Stephen-Smith told The Canberra Times.
“We are absolutely committed to ensuring that our health system can deliver the services Canberrans need and that means an extra $227.3 million through the mid-year [budget] review directly into Canberra Health Services.
“Health is already almost a third of the budget. I suspect with this decision, it will be at least a third of the budget for this financial year,” she said.
“We simply cannot have it growing at 10% a year. It’s not sustainable, so we need to do something about that. But we also need to look at our priorities because health will always be a priority.”
Ms Stephen-Smith said Canberra Health Services would be making $27 million in savings this year, via replacing agency and contract staff with permanent employees, and insourcing more elective surgeries.
The government would also consider cutting some services, reducing low-value care and sending patients from NSW back to hospitals in their own state.
According to the health minister, patient encounters across CHS grew by 107,000 in 2023-24 compared to the previous financial year. Between July and December 2024, 85,000 more patients entered the system compared to the previous year, an increase of 16%.
Emergency department presentations increased by 7.6% while overnight hospital admissions grew by 8.8%. ACT’s emergency presentations increased by 7%, well in excess of the national average of 0.4%.
The 2024-25 ACT budget spent $2.6 billion on healthcare.