Queensland families are receiving targeted care closer to home with Children’s Health Queensland expanding its statewide community services in the 2023-24 financial year.
The Children’s Health Queensland Hospital and Health Service Annual Report has been tabled in Parliament, detailing the life-saving care delivered to tens of thousands of Queensland children and young people over the past financial year.
This included 46,500 presentations to emergency at Queensland Children’s Hospital, more than 11,900 new referrals to the Child Health Service in community-based services and 15,286 telehealth consultations with patients and families across the state.
The report also details new initiatives aimed at providing targeted care closer to home, through the expansion of Community Services and the launch of the Ellen Barron Family Centre’s Virtual Residential Parenting Service (VRPS) for families living in rural and remote areas of Queensland.
Children’s Health Queensland Chief Executive Frank Tracey said: “We have placed a significant focus on expanding our community health services to deliver care to all families closer to home. Now Queensland mums, dads and carers across Queensland have better access to healthcare when they need it the most, at the most critical times of their child’s lives.
“Our exceptional teams across Children’s Health Queensland have demonstrated an outstanding dedication to our organisational values and to delivering sustainable, person-centred care when and where it is needed.”
As part of Children’s Health Queensland’s Health Equity Strategy, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families have continued to remain a strong focus, with health and wellbeing activities in high demand.
The Indigenous Respiratory Outreach Care (IROC) conducted 498 face-to-face consultations in 14 communities in 2023-2024, a 10 per cent increase on the last financial year.
In addition, the Deadly Ears program delivered specialist ear nose and throat (ENT) clinical and surgical outreach services to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in 10 regional and remote communities across Queensland. Deadly Ears ENT specialists saw 620 children and 95 children underwent surgery through outreach services.
Read the Children’s Health Queensland Hospital and Health Service 2023-2024 Annual Report.
Further highlights from the Children’s Health Queensland 2023-24 Annual Report:
- The Queensland Children’s Hospital’s cardiac team performed successful open-heart surgery on the smallest baby (16 days old) to undergo the procedure at the hospital.
- The Queensland Children’s Hospital medical imaging team performed its 500th PET-CT scan. Queensland Children’s Hospital was the first paediatric hospital in Australia to offer the digital PET-CT technology which is used to diagnose and treat young people with cancers, epilepsy and some inflammatory and infectious diseases.
- In the past year, Children’s Health Queensland researchers produced outstanding results with their reach expanding to more than 130 cities across 35 countries, with more than 665 international collaborations with leading institutions worldwide.
- Children’s Health Queensland established a dedicated centre of research excellence for Advanced Therapies and Clinical Trials Innovation. The ACTION Centre is a centralised paediatric clinical trials service, offering more clinical trials to a larger cohort of children, young people and their families. It will build Queensland’s capacity and capability in advanced therapies for children with rare diseases and become the centre of excellence in the Southern Hemisphere.
ENDS
Media contact: t: 0409 417 194 e: chqnews@health.qld.gov.au