{"id":1310,"date":"2019-01-22T19:19:53","date_gmt":"2019-01-22T19:19:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/?p=1310"},"modified":"2019-01-22T19:19:53","modified_gmt":"2019-01-22T19:19:53","slug":"labors-plan-to-improve-cairns-hospital-ed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/2019\/01\/22\/labors-plan-to-improve-cairns-hospital-ed\/","title":{"rendered":"LABOR\u2019S PLAN TO IMPROVE CAIRNS HOSPITAL ED"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A Shorten Labor Government will deliver better emergency care for the people of Cairns by investing in a major redevelopment of the Cairns Hospital Emergency Department.<br \/>\nA recent review of the hospital called for a number of high priority improvements to the emergency department while a more substantial expansion is planned.<br \/>\nLabor will invest $15 million to deliver these improvements as part of our Fair Go Action Plan to protect Medicare and fix our hospitals.<br \/>\nThis commitment comes on top of our promise to put $60 million towards a new dedicated training facility at Cairns Hospital, which will help attract and retain health workers in Far North Queensland.<br \/>\nThe new facility will help address the critical health workforce shortage that risks undermining the quality of health care in this region.<br \/>\nBut that is a longer-term project.<br \/>\nThe Emergency Department redevelopment is something we can deliver in the next 12 to 24 months \u2013 delivering tangible health benefits to this community.<br \/>\nThe redevelopment will improve safety for patients and staff alike and bring down wait times.<br \/>\nIt will include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>An increase in adult short stay capacity from 8 to 16 adult beds<\/li>\n<li>A 4-bed pediatric short stay unit<\/li>\n<li>Improvements to resuscitation bays and trauma treatment spaces<\/li>\n<li>Front of house improvements to provide dedicated space for ambulance offload<\/li>\n<li>And better telehealth facilities.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Population growth has made Cairns Hospital Emergency Department one of the busiest in Queensland, with activity going up by 4 per cent each year. In 2017-18 the number of presentations exceeded 70,000 for the first time.<br \/>\nThat\u2019s why we have to invest now in this hospital.<br \/>\nLabor believes Australian should get the best quality health care whenever they need it \u2013 no matter if you live in downtown Brisbane or Far North Queensland.<br \/>\nThat\u2019s why the last federal Labor Government invested $12m in Cairns Hospital through our Health and Hospitals Fund.<br \/>\nThe Liberals on the other hand just cut and cut and cut from health. As Treasurer, Scott Morrison cut from health and hospitals in every Budget he authored.<br \/>\nHis government has cut $7.2 million from Cairns Hospital under the current 2017 to 2020 funding agreement.<br \/>\nThat\u2019s equivalent to 20 nurses, or 11,000 emergency department visits, or 17,500 outpatient appointments. And it\u2019s part of a $160m cut to Queensland hospitals and a $715m cut nationwide.<br \/>\nNow Morrison is trying to lock in those cuts for another five years \u2013 a dud deal that the Queensland Labor Government is resisting.<br \/>\nLabor will reverse the Liberal cuts with our $2.8 billion Better Hospitals Fund, which we will use to fund projects like this one.<br \/>\nOnly Labor can be trusted to fix Queensland\u2019s hospitals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Shorten Labor Government will deliver better emergency care for the people of Cairns by investing in a major redevelopment of the Cairns Hospital Emergency Department. A recent review of the hospital called for a number of high priority improvements to the emergency department while a more substantial expansion is planned. Labor will invest $15 &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/2019\/01\/22\/labors-plan-to-improve-cairns-hospital-ed\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;LABOR\u2019S PLAN TO IMPROVE CAIRNS HOSPITAL ED&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}