Increased hospital funding by 50%

While a billion dollars was ripped out of the health system when Tony Abbott was Minister, Julia Gillard and Labor are committed to fixing our health and hospitals which will be funded nationally and run locally.

Key Achievements:

• Increased hospital funding by 50%
  

• More doctors – as part of the largest single investment in the health workforce, we have doubled the number of GP training places to 1,200 a year by 2014.
  

• More Nurses: funding over 1,000 new training places for nurses every year
  

• More beds - a record investment to build 1,300 new sub-acute hospital beds
  

• Record numbers of Australians getting their elective surgery on time: more than 76,000 elective surgery procedures have been delivered in the last two years, and over 125 hospitals have received new elective surgery equipment and operating theatres
  

• Upgrades to more than 37 emergency departments in public hospitals and rolling out a new four hour cap on emergency department waiting times
  

• More than 850,000 dental check-ups provided under the Medicare Teen Dental Plan
  

• Increased aged care places by more than 10,000 including 838 new transitional care places to help up to 6,285 older Australians leave hospital sooner each year
  

• Introduced a health check-up for every 4 year old to make sure they are fit, healthy and ready to learn when school starts
  

• Cut Binge Drinking - closed the tax loophole that saw alcopop sales soar and implementing a $103 million binge drinking strategy. This has seen alcopops consumption fall by 30 per cent
  

• McGrath Foundation specialist breast cancer nurses employed and trained as part of our National Cancer Plan
  

• Rolling out preventative health programs in schools, workplaces and communities across the country