|
 |
the issuevisit us on You Tube befriend us on Facebook download "Hospital and Health Care at Pambula" |
 |
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
24 September 2008 - Merimbula News Weekly This is what we are fighting to change. Updated - 25 June 2009.1. The health budget in NSW has suffered and is still suffering from a lower priority than could be the case. This has caused systemic deficiencies to arise in the provision of care throughout the State. Whether this results from Federal or State economies, or the combination of both, is not a primary concern in our community. Being proud Australians, we are prepared to co-operate with others to overcome hard times. 2. The central concern held here at this time stems from the substance and style of decisions made in managing equitable provision of health care in this distant south-east corner of the State. 3. For several years a political preference to close Pambula hospital in favour of the larger hospital in Bega has been repeatedly tabled. The local community has always resisted this with strong and rational argument that has won the day. Now it seems that health system administrators are taking a different approach to achieve their bean-counting generated goal. 4. The administration of that budget in our area, over the past three years, appears to have been predicated on political expediency rather than on informed, responsible concern for the health-care needs of the population. Decisions made by administrators within Greater Southern Area Health Services have the undeniable appearance of a deliberately orchestrated campaign designed to destroy what has been, for many years, a viable 28-bed country hospital. 5. Medical and surgical services, accident and emergence, maternity services and emergency surgical intervention that have all been available to a population stretching from Orbost and Mallacoota in the south to Bombala and Merimbula and its surrounds in the west and north are now under serious threat as the direct result of GSAHS’s insidious campaign. 6. Prior to the current era of destructive maladministration the community felt pride in their hospital and gratitude for the quality services it provided. Nine local GPs held visiting rights. The annual multitude of holiday makers, daily Princes Highway travellers, occasional sea-farers (including annual Sydney to Hobart race competitors) and regular plane commuters, showed confidence in visiting the Far South Coast knowing that the Pambula Hospital functioned at a high level. 7. Since 2005 adequate funds have not been allocated for general maintenance of the building and equipment so that nurses have found difficulty in properly fulfilling their responsibilities. Recently, an unsolicited and unilateral GSAHS administrative decision was made to alternate some fully functional Pambula services between Pambula and Bega Hospitals on a weekly basis. Rostering nurses between these work-places and the imposition of awkwardly devised shift arrangements were both implemented without discussion, more it seems, to destabilise the working conditions of the Pambula hospital nursing staff than to expedite better health care in this area. 8. This period of poor maintenance, divisive shift management, and the consequent steady erosion of espirit-de-corp so disillusioned nursing staff that some left Pambula or quit the profession altogether and were not replaced. This chain of events could clearly have been anticipated and avoided. In fact it seems to have been expected and welcomed by GSAHS administrators. 9. Too few available nursing staff then predictably became the rationale used to justify subsequent GSAHS decisions to further downgrade the Pambula hospital’s services. In early September all maternity services were moved to Bega. This decision was implemented while one of Pambula’s Visiting Medical Officers and the most consistently vocal and vehement critic of GSAHS administration was on vacation. 10. It is now difficult to avoid the conclusion that GSAHS’s apparent maladministration, which caused general nursing and theatre staff numbers to drop in the first place, has been a deliberate ploy designed to force the closure of maternity and operating theatre services at Pambula as a first stage in certain demolition. This Machiavellian strategy, evil in both substance and style, aligns with the past defeated proposals to close the Pambula hospital altogether. 11. Dr. Rob Morton, Chairman of the Pambula Medical Staff Council and Visiting Medical Officer at Pambula District Hospital last week tended his resignation from that latter post in frustration at this strangulation of services at Pambula District Hospital. 11. Quoted in the Merimbula News Weekly of 17 September, Dr. Morton is reported in saying, “We need to change the mindset of the middle management in charge of the hospital and I refer to the people who are looking after the services on the ground. They are not looking at Pambula hospital as a service that is respected and appreciated.” 12. As has been the case in the past this local community wants Pambula hospital to remain open and re-establish the high level of health care it can and has achieved. It must be allowed to provide that vital community service and must not be vandalised in this way. Update - 25 June 200913. Prior to the destructive maladministration exercised by GSAHS since 2005, the Far South Coast community felt pride in Pambula Hospital and gratitude for the quality services it provided. Nine local GPs held visiting rights. The annual multitude of holiday makers, daily Princes Highway travelers, occasional sea-farers (including annual Sydney to Hobart race competitors) and regular plane commuters, showed confidence in visiting this beautiful region knowing that the Pambula Hospital functioned at a high level. 14. Since 2005 adequate funds were not allocated for general maintenance of the building and equipment so that nurses found difficulty in properly fulfilling their responsibilities. Later, an unsolicited and unilateral administrative decision was made to alternate some fully functional Pambula District Hospital services away from Pambula on a weekly basis. 15. Rostering nurses between their normal work-place and another, and the imposition of awkwardly devised shift arrangements were both implemented without discussion, more it seems, to destabilize the working conditions of the Pambula District Hospital nursing staff than to expedite better health care in this area. 16. The period of poor maintenance, divisive shift management, and the consequent steady erosion of espirit-de-corp so disillusioned nursing staff that some left Pambula or quit the profession altogether and were not replaced. This chain of events could clearly have been anticipated and avoided. In fact it seems to have been expected and welcomed by GSAHS administrators for it served their long-range purpose well. 17. Their devious methodology continued and early in 2008 a team of assessors, selected by GSAHS, was assembled to carry out a Maternity Services Review within the Bega Valley. The team was provided with copies of previous reviews and other documents prior to visiting Bega and Pambula on 20 and 21 May 2008, so all members were fully conversant with all information GSAHS wanted them to have absorbed. GSAHS set the terms of reference for their inquiry. GSAHS issued a media release calling for submissions regarding the Review and arranged for two respondents to meet with the team. 18. Terms of reference for the review were:
19. At this point it is important to note that GSAHS only wanted the Review to examine “current service delivery within maternity services across Pambula and Bega Hospitals”. The deliberately manufactured process of rotational rostering across two campuses - the process set in train by GSAHS to destabilize the provision of health services in the Bega Valley – naturally then became the only focus deserving the Review team’s attention. 20. Any rational observer examining the rotational roster scheme would have seen exactly what the Review Team recorded:
and elsewhere…
21. Further references to the shortage and likely loss of general practitioners were recorded elsewhere in their Report. Yet despite the Review team’s sincere concern over these issues, and the significance of such a loss of services, GSAHS never reshaped its planned way forward, preferring instead to remain careless to the consequent wastage of precious resources their plan would inevitably create. 22. No attempt by GSAHS was made to encourage the Review team to consider the high quality of maternity service provided at Pambula Hospital that had existed for many years prior to rotational rostering of services across two campuses. 23. Had GSAHS so encouraged the Review team, the very real inadequacies in funding and maintenance that had caused dissatisfied staff to leave, for which GSAHS had earlier been deliberately responsible, might have been identified and criticized. 24. Instead, GSAHS blindfolded the Review team, and set a pathway for investigation that could only lead to a conclusion paralleling recommendations of section 8 of the Bega Valley Health Service Cluster Services Plan, September 2005-2010, titled “Current and Planned Services”. In other words, GSAHS got from the Review exactly what they had wanted throughout the previous three years. 25. The review made 13 recommendations. To this date I believe only one of these thirteen recommendations has been fully enacted with respect to Pambula Hospital. 26. That recommendation (Recommendation 1 - “All obstetric services should operate from a single site at Bega Hospital.”) describes exactly the very goal GSAHS had been pursuing, in the face of significant and consistent public opposition, since it was first stated in 2005. 27. In early September 2008 all maternity services were moved to one site. 28. Now GSAHS pins its planned way forward solely on the 2008 Maternity Review Report. Its representatives are singularly and stubbornly disinterested in any discussion questioning that planned way forward. No time and certainly no consideration is given to any suggestion that circumstances might have changed over the past five years in ways that could impact on their chosen way forward. 29. It is difficult in retrospect to avoid the conclusion that GSAHS’s Machiavellian administration, reaching back to 2005, which caused general nursing and theatre staff numbers to drop in the first place, was a deliberate ploy designed to force the closure of maternity and operating theatre services at Pambula District Hospital as a certain first step in the eventual total demise of the hospital. 30. Current management policies adopted in the hospital today continue to replicate that same pattern. In the month of June 2009, two respected senior nurses employed by GSAHS at Pambula Hospital have chosen to move on to other employment, rather than face continued employer initiated workplace dissatisfaction, while the Bega Valley Health Service Director of Nursing and Midwifery has resigned and moved to Queensland. 31. The community that supports the restoration of all services previously available at Pambula District Hospital is now calling on the Bega Valley Shire Council to publicly commit wholeheartedly, unequivocally and actively to that cause. That community deserves to feel both unified and strengthened in its purpose through the confident display of civic leadership that its elected representatives are positioned to display. 32. Together we must show that all GSAHS actions pursued since 2005 threatening Pambula District Hospital have not only been considered wrong by more than 22062 people, but have actually endangered the provision of health services on the Far South Coast. |
