Ms Anne O'Connor:

On the winter planning, the Senator is absolutely correct. We usually see a big surge on the first few days of January once GP clinics reopen fully and people start attending and are referred to hospitals. The critical issue for us in respect of emergency departments and hospitals in particular relates to the flow that is created. Many people attending will be people who are either older or with chronic disease, which is why we have focused in our winter plan on the development of specific initiatives to support people to stay at home. I refer not just to home support, which is a significant investment and especially so in the first quarter, but also to integrated specialist teams for older persons and chronic disease management whom GPs can work with and access.

From our perspective, we want to ensure that people who attend an emergency department are turned around in order that as many people as possible can go home and be supported through our intervention teams and outpatient parenteral antibiotic therapy, OPAT, programme. A range of initiatives are focused entirely on reducing the need for people to attend the emergency department or, if they attend, to be treated in the emergency department and discharged. If such people require admission, the focus is on them being seen as quickly as possible through the hospital system, with good options at the end of their pathway of care from the hospital back out to the community and all those supports. More than half the funding in the winter plan this year is targeted at community investment, which is to avoid that congestion in January that we experienced in previous years. We have been building on the learning from previous years as to what has worked and what we will be aiming for in January next year.