Media Releases and Communiques

Australian Health Ministers’ Conference Joint Communiqué 5th December 2008.

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5 December 2008

Following last weekend’s COAG meeting, today’s Health Ministers meeting marked another important step towards ending the blame game in health.

Earlier in the year, the Australian Government invested $150 million for a blitz on elective surgery, with a target of 25,000 surgeries this year. This is in addition to the many surgical procedures undertaken every year by the states and territories.

Ministers reported that every state or territory had already met or exceeded its target – with 35,000 extra procedures already delivered.

This represents significant progress in tackling elective surgery waiting times.

That is a remarkable demonstration of what can happen when different levels of government are determined to end the blame game, and deliver better results for patients.

That is 35,000 people who have had hip surgeries, knee surgeries, and other important procedures long before they otherwise would have.

Additional Elective Surgery Procedures – Preliminary Data

State/ Trerritory	Target	Additional Procedures*
ACT	250	680
NSW	8,734	10,438
NT	500	500
QLD	4,000	6,857
SA	2,262	2,824
Tas	895	1,184
VIC	5,908	9,918
WA	2,720	2,987
Total	25,278	35,388

Latest available preliminary data from each jurisdiction, ranging from end October to end November 2008

The Ministers also discussed the recent Commonwealth announcement of $750 million to take pressure off emergency departments.

All jurisdictions have already begun discussions about the most effective ways to invest that funding to deliver better services.

The state-by-state breakdown of funding is:

	NSW $m	VIC $m	QLD $m	WA $m	SA $m	TAS $m	ACT $m	NT $m	AUS $m
2008-09	248.6	181.3	146.7	75.3	61.7	16.6	10.0	9.8	750.0

Note: The distribution of the $750 million between States is based on the current Australian Health Care Agreements methodology.

New version of Australian Health Plan for Pandemic Influenza 2008

All Ministers endorse the latest version of a national health management plan to respond to a pandemic influenza outbreak should it occur.

The AHMPPI 2008 is a demonstration of all governments’ commitment to keeping Australia secure against potential threats.

The AHMPPI 2008 is a comprehensive plan to limit the impacts of a pandemic on the health system and on the Australian population.

The AHMPPI 2008 provides planners with the capacity, capability and flexibility to respond to a pandemic as severe as the one that occurred in 1918.

E-health

All Ministers endorsed the National E-Health Strategy developed by Deloitte in consultation with key stakeholders, as a guide to the further development of E-Health in Australia.

The Strategy provides a practical framework and set of priorities that will help to support health reform.

The Strategy reinforces the existing collaboration of Commonwealth, State and Territory Governments on the core foundations of a national E-Health system, and identifies priority areas where this can be progressively extended to support health reform in Australia.

It also provides sufficient flexibility for individual States and Territories, and the public and private health sectors, to determine how they go about E-Health implementation within a common framework and set of priorities to maximise benefits and efficiencies.

Media contact: Sean Kelly 0417 108 362