WA is now entering its \u201cera of hospital construction\u201d, according to Premier Roger Cook.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, Mr Cook cemented the government\u2019s plans to increase hospital capacity statewide after redirecting the $1.5 billion earmarked for the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre revamp to the redevelopment of several healthcare facilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn recent days, we made some big decisions around the delivery of healthcare in this State,\u201d Mr Cook told the WA Labor State Conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause we know the system, our hospital staff, have been put to the test.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that with a growing population and an ageing population, we need more capacity. More beds and more staff. And we know the old way of doing things won\u2019t be enough.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Cook said that was why the Health Infrastructure portfolio had been created. And its creation reframed the government\u2019s approach to several projects.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt boils down to this: Should we tread water? Or we should make waves?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cDelegates, we\u2019re going to make waves. Big waves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Cook said Labor\u2019s $4.7b total investment into healthcare this term represented \u201cthe largest hospital building program in Western Australia\u2019s history\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Royal Perth Hospital and Peel Health Campus redevelopments are the government\u2019s shining examples of increased hospital capacity.<\/p>\n
However, Mr Cook said the buy-out of the Mt Lawley hospital from St John of God Health Care would also boost capacity sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s around 100 new public beds. It\u2019s eight more operating theatres available to public patients for surgery, and there\u2019s additional land that we could use to expand health services or aged care down the track,\u201d Mr Cook said.<\/p>\n
\u201cImportantly, it would bring even more healthcare back into public hands. And it could all happen within the space of a year.\u201d<\/p>\n
That timeline remains murky, however, given it took four years for Peel Health Campus to be handed back to the State \u2014 including a year-long delay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WA is now entering its \u201cera of hospital construction\u201d, according to Premier Roger Cook. On Sunday, Mr Cook…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[64,63,137,500,44,84,7239,45],"class_list":["post-282411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-state-politics","tag-wa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}