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Let pollies know we need a university hospital now

MEGAN Palmer knows exactly why the Far North needs a tertiary level hospital now.

The mum of Keynen, 5, (both right) lived through fear, uncertainty, family separation and income loss as her son was struck down with gastroparesis.

It meant five months of treatment in Brisbane because special medical care was unavailable at Cairns Hospital.

Today the Cairns Post launches its Cairns University Hospital petition.

AN “area the size of Victoria” still does without a full service university hospital despite having some of the worst health outcomes in the country.

The Far North is dependent on Cairns Hospital for its higher level care and when that isn’t enough, patients are forced to travel to Townsville and Brisbane.

It was a state of affairs that had gone on for far too long, the head of the Far North Queensland Hospital Foundation, Dr Ken Chapman said.

“The Sunshine Coast has a full service university hospital one hour from Brisbane,” Dr Chapman said.

“We are a 24-hour drive from Brisbane; this is an area the size of Victoria. It is not just for Cairns, nearly 300,000 people are in that catchment; not counting the 40,000 tourists that are normally here on a given day.”

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk will face a united front calling for funding to upgrade Cairns Hospital to university hospital standard when the full cabinet sits in the Far North next week.

Far Northern leadership and a petition of residents demanding action will lobby the State Government to fund the project.

The delivery of services at Cairns Hospital currently ranges between level three and level five care – catering to patients from a low to moderately high complexity.

“We have a very good team of people who punch well above their weight,” Dr Chapman said.

Should the facility be upgraded to a university hospital, the level of care would achieve level six across the board; delivering treatment to patients suffering highly complex conditions and removing the need for travel to other centres.

Queensland Health has described a level six centre as “the ultimate high-level service delivering complex care and acting as a referral service for all lower-level services”.

“The people in this region have some of the worst outcomes and lowest life expectancies in the country,” Dr Chapman said.

“Cairns Hospital needs to get to that higher level to fix that; we know it makes a difference.

“If you look at life expectancy statistics for Far North Queensland as a whole it’s pretty poor; it is years lower than Townsville.”

Data from the Public Health Information Development Unit at Torrens University shows that southern Cairns suburbs have an average mortality of 66 years, while Cape York communities have recorded an average age of death of 67 years.

Dr Chapman said the potential for research and education at a university hospital would be a lure for medical talent.

“If we want to attract and keep clinicians we have to present the opportunity to do research,” Dr Chapman said.

CHHHS board chairman Clive Skarott said that through research, the complex health conditions prevalent in the Far North could be addressed.

“With a university hospital we would be able to research what is causing these problems and get better outcomes,” he said. “Really good doctors do research; we would be able to keep doctors in this area because they have left in the past as they have not been able to do research.”

Grab a copy of the Cairns Post’s petition on Page 6 and help gather signatures to send a message to our politicians.