More North West patients than ever before will have access to specialist services close to home with the creation of one statewide health system.
The health White Paper exposure draft released yesterday has outlined a range of new specialist services to be delivered on the North West.
Because of the addition to the North West of specialist clinics, consultations and pre and post-operative care, as well as the dedicated elective surgery centre at the Mersey, we expect 1000 fewer patients every year will have to travel from the North West to Launceston and Hobart to receive treatment.
This is because complex services which need to be centralised for safety reasons are those that are currently offered at very low volumes in the North West, but there are around 1500 North West patients who currently travel away from home for consultations and pre and post-op care which could be delivered locally under these reforms.
It is a similar situation with patients who currently travel interstate for complex care. Currently around 400 Tasmanians receive surgery interstate every year, and we expect this to fall to around 300 with both the LGH and Royal Hobart Hospital increasing their capacity to provide these surgeries. The small number of complex surgeries that the White Paper proposes would be more safely performed interstate are those performed much less frequently (less than 50 Tasmanian patients per year across those surgeries). There are interstate hospitals with specialised teams that provide these services every day, where our hospitals now only perform them very irregularly.
We want to see more specialists being available to patients in the North West and other regional areas, whether by visiting the area regularly or by telehealth.
This will free up more resources to support those patients who do need to travel for complex specialist or emergency surgery.
Where the Mersey Community Hospital has for many years operated as a local hospital in an environment of uncertainty about its future, the draft White Paper spells out a clear and important long-term role for it in the statewide health system.
The services available to the local community from the Mersey will be significantly enhanced by a range of new Subacute Services that will be introduced at the Mersey, including:
Additionally, the Mersey Community Hospital will become Tasmania’s dedicated Elective Day Surgery Centre, delivering a range of surgeries (including some which are not currently available at all on the North West), and for which patients all around the state are currently having to wait far too long.
Every day in Tasmania around 12 patients have their elective surgery procedure cancelled. With the Mersey having a dedicated focus on elective day surgery cases, we will reduce these occurrences, which will both reduce patients frustration and unnecessary travel time and costs, and help to bring down the unacceptable elective surgery waiting lists in Tasmania.
Today I visited and spoke to staff at both the North West Regional Hospital and Mersey Community Hospital about the changes and improvements for both centres, and the delivery of better health outcomes across the state.
The North West Regional Cancer Centre at Burnie will deliver radiation therapy on commissioning of the Linear Accelerator and will operate with close links with specialists based at the Holman Clinic in Launceston.
The creation of a single Tasmanian Health Service will also allow a range of visiting specialist clinics in the North-West. This includes establishing rheumatology, pain management, specialist geriatrics and neurology clinics with support from visiting specialists from the LGH and RHH. We will consult further on opportunities before finalising the White Paper in June 2015.
It is important that people on the North West understand that where complex surgeries for a small number of patients will now be provided at the LGH or RHH, this is because evidence shows it simply isn’t safe to provide complex surgeries in low volumes. Having been presented with this evidence it would be callous and irresponsible of the Government to continue offering complex surgeries at a hospital which doesn’t deliver the best possible chance of that surgery being delivered safely.