MEDIA RELEASE, MONDAY 22 JANUARY 2007 NORTH WEST HOSPITAL WARNING The Cradle Coast Authority has warned that hospital service and budget allocations for the region must be based on the best ways of meeting the health needs of its communities, not the reverse. The warning comes as the State Government is preparing to release an issues paper on hospital reforms in the midst of public debate on hospital budget blow-outs, with particular reference to the north west. The Authority’s Executive Chairman, Roger Jaensch, said the timing of last week’s budget ‘leaks’ could be convenient for groups that have been pressing for a redistribution of services and resources away from the region as part of a state-wide rationalisation and planning for a new hospital in Hobart. Pressure for cuts to north west hospital services have referred to claims of inefficiency and duplication associated with the operation of the Coast’s one hospital, two campus model. Mr Jaensch said the Authority supported establishment of the State-run two-campus model when Healthscope withdrew services from the Mersey Hospital in 2004, but only as an interim measure, with longer term changes to be based on a detailed, needs-based health services plan for the region. This position was supported by the Richardson Report into hospital services, released at the same time, which recommended an immediate reorganisation of hospital services in the north west, plus a process for determining the long-run location of those services. The (former) Health Minister agreed to start work on a long-term plan for the region once transition to the two-campus model was complete, but continuing delays and personnel changes meant this work had barely started when it was overtaken by the current state-wide planning process, announced in September 2006. Mr Jaensch said the Authority’s immediate concern was that, without such a plan in place, new decisions on the region’s hospital funding and services could be based on the performance of a model created in response to a crisis, not one designed to meet the region’s long-term needs. ‘We don’t want someone to just look at the figures and say “it costs too much to provide that service for that many people in the northwest - move it to Hobart”, when a better solution may be to change the way that service is provided here. No-one has had a proper look at that yet, and it should have been finished by now’. Mr Jaensch said that, whilst frustrated by events of the last three years, the Authority’s position had not changed and it would continue to promote the region’s interests through the statewide planning process. ‘We know this region must operate as part of a state-wide system, and that there need to be more changes here. Our priority is to see that those changes lead to improvements in the quality, sustainability and accessibility of health services for people in this region, not just greater efficiencies statewide’. The Authority will host a briefing for Mayors of its member Councils when the issues paper is released, and work with GPs, clinicians and other stakeholders in the region to develop a regional response to the paper by the end of February. Media contact Roger Jaensch
03) 6431 6285 or 0438 316 285