Better health services
Better emergency departments
The NSW Government’s Emergency Department Relief Package invests $480.7 million to help to avoid an estimated 290,000 visits to emergency departments each year once fully implemented. More than three million people attend NSW public hospital emergency departments each year. The package will ease pressure on emergency departments, reduce wait times and improve patient outcomes. This includes funding for urgent care services, an expanded capacity for ambulance paramedics to receive live data guiding them to the best available health facility and enhanced discharge services.
1The Mental Health Single Front Door $39 million is part of both the Emergency Department and Mental Health total.
Family Start Package
The $130.9 million Family Start Package provides early intervention programs to boost lifelong maternal and child health. This includes $40.0 million to support vulnerable children in their first 2,000 days and support services for new parents and babies provided by Tresillian and Karitane. This package also includes $21.3 million for the Waminda Birth Centre and Community Hub for First Nations women and families on the south coast to give birth in line with traditional cultural practice.
The Immunisation component of the Family Start Package allocates $15.0 million for more immunisation practitioners across Local Health Districts to improve vaccine uptake in at-risk communities.
Mental health
This Budget provides $111.8 million for more mental health care, including services to reduce long stay hospitalisation and a dedicated mental health single front door. This includes $30.4 million to expand community mental health teams.
Building better hospitals
New hospitals across NSW will receive 250 healthcare workers, including nurses and doctors as part of a $274.7 million Essential Health Services Fund. This investment will improve patient care and wait times including in Tweed, Sutherland, Cooma, Bowral, Glen Innes, Griffith, Prince of Wales, Cowra, Wentworth and various mental health facilities. This funding will also support rising costs of providing healthcare services in hospitals and increasing activity in the health system.
The Building Better Hospitals Package commits $265.0 million for a critical upgrade of Port Macquarie Hospital and an additional $395.3 million to deliver ongoing hospital redevelopments at Eurobodalla, Ryde, Temora, Mental Health Complex at Westmead, Liverpool, Moree, Nepean, Cessnock and Shellharbour.
A further $250.0 million will be invested across NSW hospitals as part of the Critical Asset Maintenance Program. Development also continues on the new Single Digital Patient Record system which will improve care and access to timely treatment and patient information.
Key Health Worker Accommodation Program
New homes for key workers will be built across regional and rural NSW as part of a $200.1 million expansion of the NSW Health Key Worker Housing Accommodation program.
This expansion in health worker housing will help to recruit and retain key health workers across rural and regional NSW.
Read the full budget overview here.
