Community
2 October, 2024
Medical care hits a record
PEOPLE sought treatment at the Far North’s seven emergency departments a record 180,407 times in the last financial year.
Despite the demand on services, the Cairns and Hinterland Hospital and Health Service (CHHHS) balanced its budget (a $477 deficit).
Staff also performed a record 8423 emergency and 10,415 elective surgeries across the region’s nine hospitals.
During the 2023-24 financial year, the service spent $1.429 billion in healthcare, averaging $3.9 million per day to provide public health services.
The annual report said staff ensured 100 per cent of the most urgent (category 1) patients were seen on time within the region’s emergency departments.
And the median waiting time for treatment in emergency departments in 2023-2024 was 16 minutes, an improvement of two minutes on the previous year.
Chief executive officer Leena Singh said the service managed unprecedented levels of patient demand while still balancing a budget. “This is despite daily challenges such as high demand for inpatient beds, constrained sites for physical growth of Cairns Hospital, and a global shortage of health specialists,” she said.
“This has meant only five per cent of patients have needed to be referred to Townsville or Brisbane for highly specialised acute services, meaning we are treating a record amount of Far North Queenslanders in their own region.
“We remain committed to delivering health services to Queenslanders closer to where they live.”
Ms Singh said to meet the record demand, the health service had a vision for the next 20 years of establishing a health and innovation precinct in Cairns.
“This is underpinned by the state government’s commitment to the Cairns Health Innovation Centre announced earlier this year,” she said.
“This would encompass additional university, private sector and health investment into research, development, clinical trials and education.
“These sectors will attract clinicians across all specialities and be a retention incentive for clinicians to stay in the region whilst continuing to develop their skills and contribute to clinical enhancements via research.
“This is also the pathway for the health service to take Cairns Hospital to a full tertiary-level hospital, allowing even more Far North Queenslanders’ access to services closer to home.”
She said the continued demand on health services meant the Cairns Hospital footprint needed to be expanded.
“During 2023-24, we received approval to proceed with the planning and development of an eight-bed adolescent mental health ward at Cairns Hospital, a four-bed mum and bub unit and planning began on the $19.3m Cairns Youth Residential Rehabilitation and Treatment Service at Edmonton,” she said.
“We have completed the detailed design of the Cairns Surgical Centre and over the next two years we will be constructing additional capacity of 96 beds as part of the $250m Cairns Hospital expansion project.”
Ms Singh paid tribute to the service’s “exemplary” staff.
