More Beds and Better Care for Westmead Kids
Western Sydney families are benefiting from improved access to more hospital services as national health reform investments take shape at Westmead Children's Hospital.
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Joint Release
The Hon Mark Butler MP
Acting Minister for Health and Ageing
Julie Owens MP
Member for Parramatta
14 July 2011 Western Sydney families are benefiting from improved access to more hospital services as national health reform investments take shape at Westmead Children's Hospital.
Acting Minister for Health and Ageing Mark Butler and local Member for Parramatta Julie Owens today visited the hospital to see new national health reform investments in action including three new lasers for ear, nose and throat surgery used in paediatric intensive care and 15 new beds all a part of $30.7 million national health reform investments at Westmead Children’s Hospital over the next four years.
Providing hospitals like Westmead Children’s with the resources they need for more beds and better care, closer to home in Western Sydney, is a key focus for national health reform, Minister Butler said.
These 15 new beds and the ear, nose and throat lasers showcase some of the ways that health reform can provide new and better care for children in Western Sydney.
Four of the new beds are dedicated to neuroscience, helping to increase the number of children the Hospital can monitor for neurological conditions such as epilepsy.
Ultimately, these investments will help Western Sydney kids get treated sooner and receive the care that’s right for them.
Ms Owens said the new beds and lasers build on prior national health reform investments that that are exciting for Parramatta.
It’s a parent’s worse nightmare to have a child who is sick and needs to spend time in hospital, Ms Owens said.
In addition to these new beds, the new CT-scan is already online and helping children every day. A new MRI machine is also committed for the hospital through national health reform.
Since 2007, the Commonwealth has committed $8.9 billion in new funding for the New South Wales health and hospital system through national health reform.
Other examples of national health reform projects to benefit the Parramatta area include:
- 45 more beds for Westmead Hospital, plus new emergency department resuscitation bays and new anaesthetic machines, monitors and operating theatre tables
- new elective surgery investments at Auburn and Blacktown Hospitals
- new headspace centre helping to provide expanded mental health services for Parramatta youth
- 44 new GPs and specialists in training across the area
- $700,000 for Holroyd City Council to promote healthy lifestyles.
- For more information about national health reform, visit the yourHealth website.
National health reform investments at The Children's Hospital at Westmead
- 5 additional sub-acute rehabilitation beds now operational (1 eating disorder, 4 neuroscience): $6 million
- 10 additional acute beds now operational: $16.1 million
- Maintenance of elective surgical beds: $1.3 million
- Elective surgery equipment including anaesthetic equipment, operating theatre lights, lead aprons, ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) laser for ENT Surgery: $525,000
- Additional emergency department equipment: $581,000
- New MRI machine: $5 million
- New SPECT-CT machine: $1.2 million
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