Transcription
You mentioned don't have. Are you investing enough, fast enough, in increasing hospital capacity to cater for that increase in category one to patients who can't go to urgent care?
Yeah, yeah. Well, we do know that my government has provided record investment in the hospital system. In terms of developing the infrastructure, you've got the new Women's and Babies Hospital being built in the southern suburbs. Major upgrades at Joondalup Hospital have recently been completed. You've seen the rebuild of the Geraldton Hospital, rebuild of the Bunbury Hospital. So, major investment everywhere, and we know we need to continue to make sure that that's the case. Uh, and we'll continue to invest. So, we announced these, um, we announced these, uh, uh, plans to build, and then we worked through the business case and the construction process.
But is it happening fast enough? Because the AMA says we're still short a thousand beds despite what you have.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, as you know, over the past five years, we've added 300,000 people to our population. Uh, that puts pressure on all manner of social services. Uh, you've heard Cole just talk here this morning. As this community develops, we've got an extra two primary schools and another high school. Uh, these are the challenges of a growing economy. We've grown in beds by 900 since 2021 alone. That's the equivalent of a new tertiary hospital in just the last four years. And we'll need to do more. And I, I take your point that there is always challenges associated with the speed of bringing these beds on. In that post-COVID period, we had some success with modular builds around bed expansion. We'll continue to look at those opportunities as well.
So, do you acknowledge it's still not enough currently? Has it happened fast enough?
Well, I acknowledge that our growing population, the aging population, and the level of disease burden that comes with that means that we are going to continue to have health as our number one priority for investment around infrastructure, investment around workforce.
You did promise.