Tuesday, 16 August 2022

Adjournment

Portland District Health

Ms BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (19:00): (6476) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Health, and the action I seek is for the minister to travel to Portland and meet the residents who have been adversely impacted by the closure of services at Portland District Health. The former health minister paid a fly-in, fly-out visit to Portland in late March for a carefully managed tour of the hospital and media op. Sadly he refused to meet the community members who were concerned about the loss of several services at the hospital. Birthing services at Portland District Health were suspended on 16 March. PDH announced that the service would return this week—finally, some positive news for expectant mums and their families. It is also terrific news for the wonderful midwives, so let us hope the service can now stay open. Ophthalmologist Robert Harvey left PDH in March. He has not been replaced. In April the hospital was left without overnight urgent-care doctors for more than a week, with only a nursing team on site and telehealth services available. General anaesthetist training at PDH has also been scrapped and moved to Hamilton.

If the loss of those services was not a cause for concern, and clearly it should be, then the resignation of board member Michael Bartos recently has the alarm bells ringing loudly. Associate Professor Bartos worked for the World Health Organization for many years. Clearly he has expertise in public health issues. Importantly he was one of the few locals left on the PDH board. In public comments describing why he had resigned, Associate Professor Bartos told the Portland Observer that the PDH board favoured accountability to the health department over its duty as a health service. He said the board had failed to establish its future vision in a positive way and there had been little progress in implementing the rural generalist workforce model as recommended by the Hillis report. Professor Bartos’s public comments were damning yet very important to note. He told the Observer:

The community is not a stakeholder to be managed or quieted down.

The community is an asset. It’s fundamental to the future of PDH. It’s impossible to imagine a successful PDH without the backing of its community.

Not surprisingly Associate Professor Bartos also contradicted the Premier’s claims made in this place that services at PDH had not been scaled back, telling the Observer:

… in terms of the services which PDH provides, the record has been that they’ve diminished over the last year, they haven’t increased.

Associate Professor Bartos’s comments show the Portland community has lost confidence in the PDH board, and concerns remain around the future direction of healthcare delivery. I urge the new Minister for Health to engage with the Portland community to outline what positive steps are being taken to fix the problems plaguing Portland District Health, outline when services will return and guarantee no further services will be cut.