Wednesday, 19 June 2024

 Cindy McLEISH (Eildon) (19:00): (711) My matter this evening is for the Minister for Health, and the action I seek is for the minister to come clean and to tell rural communities her plans for the future of their local hospitals. Is it the government’s agenda to establish six super health services in metropolitan Melbourne and six in the regions with no connections to their communities? This would mean hospital mergers. I heard the minister on 774 dodging the question of mergers, refusing to rule them out. The minister needs to be clear and up-front. Communities cannot see any upside to this plan, only negatives. Staff in rural hospitals are already working under budgetary constraints and resource-poor conditions. And I think it is only fair, because we have hospital staff, board members, local doctors, health practitioners, patients and their families, and community members all left to speculate because of the lack of information out there. It really is causing great distress. There is worry that the main motivator here for planning services will be financial improvement rather than one of meeting the community’s needs.

For example, will maternity services, infusion scopes or dialysis in Mansfield be impacted? How about the visiting specialist surgeries at Alexandra? Will urgent care and mental health services be impacted? Yea have finally been able to deliver mental health services again. They have a fabulous men’s health program being run with the Murrindindi council at the Yea saleyards during the cattle sales. This is hugely successful and possibly the only program like it in the world. Research tells us we need to be agile, innovative and original in our approaches, but I fear that super clinics and super hospitals will do everything but this. I worry greatly too that the expert advisory committee which has been convened does not have direct experience with rural health services. The chair of the panel the former Labor member for Bendigo West Bob Cameron might know regional hospitals, but he does not understand the ins and outs of the small hospitals.

Communities have so many questions, and they want answers. Are all hospitals in my area going to be headquartered out of Shepparton or maybe Melbourne’s Eastern Health or Northern Health? Will services be rationalised? If so, which services? Will jobs be lost? How many of the small rural hospitals are subject to funding cuts – which ones? Is block funding going to be continued? Will hospitals be given additional funding once a new enterprise agreement is agreed to with the nurses and midwives? Are hospitals expected to draw down on cash surpluses? Are hospitals expected to dig into their reserves to get through the next six months, punishing them for being successful in the past? And what about bequests? When in 153 years Mansfield has seen many bequests – and I know in Yea entire estates and houses have been left to hospitals – what should happen here? Is it the minister’s intent to force hospitals into financial difficulty so they have no option but to look at merging? (Time expired)