General News
23 August, 2024
Health service shake-up call
The biggest shake-up of Victoria's health services in a generation has taken hospital CEOs across the region by surprise.
While being asked earlier this year to trim millions from their budgets - Grampians Health was understood to be anticipating up to $50 million in cuts - they are now wondering where, when and how a $1.5 billion injection of extra funding is going to be spent.
After months of speculation, stonewalling and rumour-mongering from countless quarters, the state government has finally come clean on its intentions for a revamped regional health service.
Instead of the much-feared amalgamations, it says it will invest the extra funds on top of its existing $8.8 billion budget to "streamline" many non-clinical services, and establish a new overarching agency - Hospitals Victoria - but without an army of newly-minted bureaucrats to further drain the system.
Health boards across the Wimmera are breathing a huge sight of relief - but the prognosis is far from clear-cut.
This new investment, says the government, will support a further 10,000 surgeries - bringing its total target for elective surgery for this financial year to 210,000.
"This is the funding our hospitals told us they needed, and this is what we’ve delivered," the statement said.
Hospitals Victoria will work with hospitals to identify back-office functions that can be consolidated - such as payroll and IT systems.
A new electronic medical records system also will be rolled out to "provide seamless and more efficient care for patients" - that is, a system allowing patient’s records to move with them, regardless of the hospital at which they are being treated.
"Health services will be supported to reduce non-clinical duplication and double-up, while at the same time promoting stronger partnerships between our hospitals," the government says, promising to "make our health system stronger and more connected - while continuing our focus on patients and frontline care".
At regional level, where Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas has been seen by some as the devil in disguise, the target of community protests and not a small amount of vitriol, the biggest fear has been the swallowing up of smaller health services by their larger neighbours.
One of the recommendations put to the Minister by an independent expert advisory committee was for Victoria’s 76 health services to be amalgamated into 12.
There can be no doubt such a move was seriously contemplated.
Grampians Health was purported to lead a supersized model comprising West Wimmera Health Service, Rural Northwest Health, East Wimmera Health Service, East Grampians Health Service, Beaufort and Skipton Health Service, and Central Highlands Rural Health.
However, this was the only one of the committee's 27 recommendations not accepted by the government.
Growing antagonism towards Spring Street over its plans - not least from within the health services themselves - may well have turned the tide.
It now would appear the dreaded "amalgamation" - or at least the worst of it - has been rebranded under the newly-christened Local Health Service Networks.
Created as a "stronger" version of the existing Health Service Partnerships, these new entities will be designed to "bring together" hospitals within a geographical region, while retaining their own board and CEO.
They will "support hospitals to collaborate - enabling them to work together to deliver better care, while also better supporting staff across each region".
The finer details have yet to be revealed, but it is understood the Grampians network could embrace Maryborough District Health Service in addition to those previously mooted under the amalgamation model.
Each network will establish a formal relationship with a major tertiary, a women’s and a children’s hospital, allowing patients to "more easily and quickly access specialist care, strengthening referral pathways and enabling the sharing of expertise across specialties".
"Once established the networks will share functions like payroll and IT - making sure our hospitals can focus on what they do best, caring for patients," the government says.
Led by Siva Sivarajah, who has stepped up from his position as CEO of Northern Health, based in Epping, the new agency within the Health Department is charged with delivering "a more integrated and efficient health system, without disrupting the local services we know Victorian families trust and rely on".
And while its critics argue this is merely amalgamation by stealth, there can be little argument the devil is lingering somewhere - not in the Minister's office, perhaps, but doubtless in the detail.