The state government will invest about an additional $105 million this financial year into hospitals, Treasurer Peter Gutwein and Health Minister Michael Ferguson have announced.
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The announced funding boost comes on top of the extra $465 million budgeted for health in the 2018-19 Budget and will be reflected in the Treasurer’s Revised Estimates report later this year.
In joint statement, the Treasurer and the Health Minister said the funding was to meet the costs of increased demand being delivered.
“Investing these additional funds, as previously foreshadowed, is the result of increasing patient demand for our services,” Mr Ferguson said.
“Health is by its nature demand driven and our public hospital EDs never close their doors. Between 2016 and now, annual demand on our emergency departments has risen by more than 7,000 patients.
“Health is a top priority for the Hodgman government, and that is why we are investing a record amount into Tasmania’s health system.”
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They said the government was constructing the buildings that were needed to open nearly 300 more hospital beds and recruit more frontline staff, including 800 extra nurses.
“We are only able to invest these extra funds because of our sensible financial management and the strength of our finances,” Mr Gutwein said.
The funding announcement comes in the midst of Tasmanian branch members of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation and Health and Community Services Union’s continuing industrial action until the government agrees to scrap a 2 per cent wage cap.
On November 20, a Legislative Council sub-committee’s inquiry into the state’s acute health system said the government need to address the underlying budgetary shortfall in health, and that it believed there was a structural deficit in funding of $100 million in 2016-17.
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