HEALTH Action Southern Highlands (HASH) urged the community to fight for the future of Bowral Hospital at a public rally that attracted about 600 people yesterday afternoon.
HASH secretary Nick Illek believes general surgery is being restricted, ophthalmologic services are threatened and obstetrics services may also be reduced at the hospital.
“We cannot let this hospital continue to decline,” he told the rally.
Mr Illek said the gradual reduction in surgery and services would lead to a downgrade of Bowral Hospital.
“Restricted surgical services leads to reduced emergency services leads to hospital downgrade,” he wrote on a flyer ahead of the meeting.
NSW Shadow Health Minister Jillian Skinner told the rally she had uncovered “tricks” designed to hide true waiting lists for hospitals.
“If a doctor has ten patients but only has enough time to treat six of them in a certain timeframe, the other four cannot be added to a waiting list,” she said.
Ms Skinner believes NSW Health refuses to add patients to waiting lists if they cannot be treated within a year.
She called for all patients to be counted.
“A waiting list is a planning tool,” she said.
Ms Skinner pledged the NSW Opposition would remove area health services and create district boards of local businesspeople and health professionals if successful at next year’s election.
A spokesman for the Sydney South West Area Health Service (SSWAHS) said there were no plans to downgrade Bowral Hospital.
Hospital general manager Denis Thomas said SSWAHS was committed to the hospital.
He said this year the hospital would provide 30 per cent more joint operations than last year.
However, some orthopaedic patients from Bowral are being ferried by ambulance to Sydney for surgery despite doctors at Bowral Hospital being available to operate.
Mr Thomas acknowledged the patient transfer.
“To ensure patients receive their surgery within clinically appropriate timeframes, it is sometimes necessary for the hospital to refer patients to other networked hospitals for care,” he said.
“Many patients have been happy to be referred to other hospitals as it has enabled them to have their procedure sooner.”
Orthopaedic surgeons Andrew Leicester and Nick Hartnell say they will perform only half as many operations as previous years because the hospital has exceeded its quota for joint replacement surgeries.
“Bowral Hospital is over budget ... but these decisions shouldn’t just be made based on funding, they should be about patient care,” Dr Leicester said. “And what they are proposing is very bad for patient care.”
Dr Hartnell said the SSWAHS argument about increasing numbers of patients being treated were “irrelevant”.
“There was an increase because more patients are there. We’ve got the resources to do it,” he said. “The only thing we don’t have is the funding.”
Mr Illek put the increase over the past year down to a number of patients from the South Coast coming to Bowral for orthopaedic surgery.
“Our message [to the health service] is, ‘Don’t relocate our patients to Sydney because South Coast patients are coming here. Relocate the South Coast patients to Sydney,” he said.
Goulburn MP Pru Goward said it was crazy to cut the surgery locally just to shift patients somewhere else.
She also believed the cuts were part of a wider plan to downgrade Bowral Hospital.
“I would need a lot of convincing that it would be economical to do the surgery anywhere else,” she said.
“The area health service wants to reduce [Bowral] to a very basic hospital and gradually shift their facilities to a bigger hospital.”
The area health spokesman said Bowral hospital had undergone significant upgrades in the past 12 months.
The upgrades were community-funded refurbishment of the Children’s Ward and set-up of the renal unit.
Mr Thomas said other recent improvements included refurbishment of the high dependency unit, hospital kitchen, a new short stay unit, clinical information department and upgrades to the paediatric unit.
In August last year, then Health Minister John Della Bosca said Bowral Hospital had been supported with more than $4 million of funding and upgrades in the preceding three years.
Community action groups Green Between and Bowral Matters were present at the rally, along with Councillors Juliet Arkwright, Jim Mauger, Graham McLaughlin, David Stranger and Paul Tuddenham.
Cr McLaughlin said the increased hospital funding promised by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd would help alleviate some of the problems at Bowral.
“There is only so many resources to go around. That’s why the Prime Minister is tipping in a big bucket of money,” he said.
“The sooner they get that sorted out between the Commonwealth and the States, the better off we will be.”
Ms Goward urged residents concerned about the future of the hospital to send letters to the NSW Health Minister and NSW Premier.
Email a friend