Strong health support for local families is a priority for Catherine.
From Ballarat to Bacchus Marsh, from Ballan to Creswick and Daylesford, Catherine has been a tireless campaigner for better health facilities.
Catherine’s achievements include:
$42 million Federal Government funding for a new cancer centre in Ballarat. The announcement came after Catherine led a community campaign. Letters, emails, faxes and petitions were received from across the electorate and the region, and were presented directly to Minister for Health and Ageing Nicola Roxon. The Victorian Government also provided $13 million towards this important project.
Australia’s first GP Super Clinic was opened in Ballan. The $2.3 million Ballan GP Super Clinic will operate from newly constructed premises built alongside the Ballan and District Soldiers’ Memorial Bush Nursing Hospital. The Labor Government provided $1.4 million towards the clinic with the local community contributing the remaining $900,000.
The Labor Government funded a $2 million upgrade to the Bacchus Marsh and Melton Regional Hospital. This financed the refurbishment of the women’s unit, medical and surgical units, establishment of a medical imaging unit and security upgrades at the hospital.
Daylesford residents received better access to after-hours GP services following a grant of $99,600 under the General Practice After Hours Program from the Labor Government to the Springs Medical Centre.
Additionally, the Federal Government was pleased to contribute $500,000 under the Rural Medical Infrastructure Fund to this new facility.
Funding was also provided by Deakin Medical School committing $225,000 and Hepburn Health Services $1.7 million, contributing to a total project cost of $2.425 million.
Families and residents in Creswick also benefited, with significantly better access to quality health services following a funding injection of $547,194.97 to the Creswick Medical Centre through the Labor Government’s National Rural and Remote Health Infrastructure Program (NRRHIP).
On a federal level the Gillard Government has been busy delivering improvements to health and hospital services. Some of our key acheivements on a federal level are:
- Increased hospital funding by 50%.
- Around 23 new GP Super Clinics will be built and up to 425 existing GP clinics will be expanded to provide patients with more services in a single location.
- More doctors – as part of the largest single investment in the health workforce, we have doubled the number of GP training places to 1200 a year by 2014.
- More Nurses: funding over 1,000 new training places for nurses every year. Funding around 4,600 nurses working in GP practices.
- More beds - a record investment to build 1,300 new sub-acute hospital beds.
- Record numbers of Australians getting their elective surgery on time: more than 76,000 elective surgery procedures have been delivered in the last two years, and over 125 hospitals have received new elective surgery equipment and operating theatres.
- Upgrades to more than 35 emergency departments in public hospitals.
- Rolling out a four hour cap on emergency department waiting times.
- More than 850,000 dental check-ups provided under the Medicare Teen Dental Plan.
- Increased aged care places by more than 10,000, including 838 new transition care places to help more than 6,200 older Australians leave hospital sooner each year. Delivering support for an extra 2,500 aged
care places.
- Introduced a health check-up for every 4 year old to make sure they are fit, healthy and ready to learn when school starts.
- Cut Binge Drinking - closed the tax loophole that saw alcopop sales soar and implementing a $103 million binge drinking strategy. This has seen alcopops consumption fall by 30 per cent.
- 44 McGrath Foundation specialist breast cancer nurses employed and trained as part of our National Cancer Plan.
- Rolling out preventative health programs in schools, workplaces and communities across
the country.
- Setting tough new uniform national hospital standards.
- Providing 20,000 extra young people a year with access to mental health services.
Click here to access the Fact Sheet on achievements in Health.