The Hodgman Liberal Government is providing future certainty for the John L Grove rehabilitation centre with a significant $20 million commitment.
In the first major 2017-18 Tasmanian Budget funding announcement, the four-year, $5 million per annum funding commitment will give staff and clients peace of mind for this important Northern facility.
With the Budget back on track, we are able to invest in these important services and as we foreshadowed in 2015, we can now welcome John L Grove back into our state wide health system.
John L Grove is a 20-bed slow-to-recover rehabilitation unit which is part of the Launceston General Hospital.
It operates separately with a professional multi-disciplinary team providing low to medium density therapy aimed at increasing the functional capacity of clients.
The service helps clients return to normal life, with the average patient staying a little longer than one month.
Fixing the health system is a priority for this Government and we are getting on with the job by securing long-term certainty for health services in Launceston, securing 70 jobs and securing long-stay rehabilitation for the 420 clients they’ve seen over the past two and a half years, predominantly from Northern Tasmania and the East Coast.
The staff are made up of a dedicated team of 32 nurses, 9 allied health, a specialist geriatrician and medical registrar, and other hospital support workers, along with pharmacy support.
The future of the centre had been left hanging under the former state Labor-Greens and federal Labor Governments due to short term funding deals without any state health budget in place.
However in 2015, after considerable negotiation with the federal Liberal Government, we secured a federal funding commitment for two years. And now with this $20 million commitment in our up-coming Budget, we are providing the certainty staff and clients of John L Grove wanted.
Health is a priority for the Hodgman Government and this is just another example of securing future certainty for an important health facility, as we did with the Mersey Community Hospital for residents of the North West, just over three weeks ago.