Boards answer questions
Management boards collaborating to promote a merger between four western Victorian health-service organisations are answering community questions about the concept through a series of weekly fact sheets.
The group, working under a Care For Our Region banner, is calling for questions and releasing fact sheets on website careforourregion. com.au.
The group is promoting the series to clarify its position amid considerable community debate and anxiety regarding the proposal.
The concept, which needs ministerial approval to proceed, includes merging Wimmera Health Care Group, Edenhope and District Memorial Hospital, Stawell Regional Health and Ballarat Health Services.
The first of the series is based on the expected economic effect a new collective health service would have on the Wimmera.
Wimmera Health Care Group chief executive Catherine Morley provided a snapshot of motivations such as locum staff and staff recruitment.
“We have an extensive use of locum staff and agency nurses to ensure we have enough staff on our roster every day. That’s great we’ve got them and we really appreciate that they’re here,” she said.
“What we want to do is attract and retain these highly skilled people to be part of our community, to live in town and to support our community and know our community and to help them with their wellbeing needs.
“Staff recruitment will be easier because we will be part of a larger health service.
“Currently in Horsham we’re unable to attract someone to come up one day a week. It just isn’t in their best interest – we just don’t have that critical mass.
“If we’re part of a large health service a cardiologist, an orthopaedic surgeon specialising in shoulder replacement could be part of a larger orthopaedic team, have a schedule that would include coming here once a fortnight and doing a couple of days of treatment, perhaps working in Stawell, working in Ballarat, but having the capacity to be part of a peer-support network, access to a range of surgeries they will be able to do and the ability to grow as well because there will always be a head orthopaedic surgery that will come up at some stage – we don’t offer that option in Horsham as a single identity.
“We believe the medical workforce needs opportunities to be part of a team that Horsham just can’t provide.”