Victorian health services will receive an extra $147 million in the 1999-2000 budget, a growth of 3.0% since last year.

The Department of Human Services overall will be funded for almost $6.68 billion. The six health programs — Acute Health, Ambulances, Mental Health, Public Health, Primary Health and Aged Care — receive $5.02 billion of that.

The extra $147 million for health programs will go to staffing more ambulances in the outer parts of Melbourne and regional Victoria, increasing resources to fight depression and other mental illness, and caring for the growing number of frail elderly in the community.

An extra $82.7 million will go to hospitals for acute care, which will treat over 950,000 admitted patients this year.

The extra hospital funding includes $30 million for previously agreed salary increases to nurses and other health professionals.

Included in the extra funding are:

• $528,000 as part of a four year, $5.1-million plan to establish a Depression and Anxiety Treatment Service to combat the high level of undetected depression in the community. An additional $4.4 million will fund growth in existing mental-health services.
• $1 million to expand the State’s screening programs for genetic bowel and other cancers. This will allow an extra 16,000 at-risk people to be tested for preventable genetic diseases.
• $3.9 million towards installing an extra 7600 mobile personal alarm systems by the year 2002. The alarm systems are attached to 24-hour monitoring services, which can be contacted via a small pendant alarm worn around the neck of frail elderly people living at home. These systems will allow thousands of people to continue living at home, with the security of having instant help in the case of emergency.
• $5.5 million of growth funding for Community Health services and Home and Community Care programs.
• $1.2 million to increase access to needle-exchange programs, an increase of 42% over last year.

Also, an extra $15 million is to go to Victoria’s ambulance services, an 8.0% increase on last year’s revised budget, bringing annual spending on the services to $198 million.

$5 million of this amount is earmarked for increased ambulance services.

The rest of the $15 million will go to the continual strengthening of emergency services in rural areas and the outer suburbs of Melbourne, including an upgrade of the fixed-wing ambulance fleet.

In capital works, $7 million will be spent to fund the purchase of new ambulances in rural and regional Victoria.

(News Releases 1 and 2, Office of the Minister for Health and Aged Care, May 4, 1999)