Agency Budget Highlights 2011-12
Message from the Minister
The State Government is committed to building and expanding hospitals, creating a world-class health system supported by world-class clinical staff, and delivering more services sooner, closer to home.
We are doing that by building new hospital wards and expanding services across Queensland, investing in new technology and innovation, and hiring record numbers of world-class clinical staff to deliver more services to Queenslanders than ever before.
In 2011-12 Queensland's health budget will increase by 10.6 per cent to $11.046 billion. That is a record health budget for Queensland.
The 2011-12 Health Budget will deliver new and expanded health services by building new and expanded health facilities, through research and technology, and through greater innovation.
Our commitment is to delivering more services sooner, closer to home. The government is investing $6.998 billion from 2011-12 to 2014-15 into Queensland's health building program - making it Australia's largest health infrastructure program.
The infrastructure program is building and rebuilding hospitals across the state, which means more Queenslanders will have greater access to vital health care facilities closer to home. During the construction phase, this multi-billion dollar health building program is expected to create nearly 40,000 construction jobs within our communities across the life of these projects.
To deliver these new health services in expanded hospitals across Queensland, the number of doctors, nurses and allied health staff in our public hospitals has grown by more than 4,700 since March 2009.
This budget also delivers on the government's focus on flexible approaches to healthcare. We are changing and modernising the services we provide, to deliver them closer to home for Queenslanders.
Programs like 13 HEALTH deliver nursing advice in your lounge room, not the waiting room; the world's largest Telehealth program means Queensland's best specialists are providing remote consultations with patients over videolink; and our Home and Community Care services give support to patients once they return home after treatment.
The face of healthcare is changing. To help create this change, the Queensland Government is working in partnership with the Australian Government to reform the way our health services will be managed and delivered in the future. A key part of these reforms is the development of Local Health and Hospital Networks (LHHNs), which are expected to be operational nationally by 1 July 2012.
Through the 2011-12 State Budget, Queensland Health will deliver safe, flexible, efficient, high-quality and responsive health services for all Queenslanders.
Geoff Wilson MP
Minister for Health
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