FORCED hospital amalgamations are out, they say, but Local Health Service Networks are in.
Servicing an estimated population of 250,000 in this region by 2026 will be the Gippsland Network to include the following health services: Bairnsdale Regional Health Service, Bass Coast Health, Central Gippsland Health Service, Gippsland Southern Health Service, Latrobe Regional Hospital, Omeo District Health, Orbost Regional Health, South Gippsland Hospital, and Yarram & District Health Service.
But it may not be all good news for Bass Coast residents and those living in parts of South Gippsland, remote from Latrobe Regional Hospital (LRH).
According to the State Government’s health plan, they know people from Bass Coast won’t go to LRH but they’ve grouped this area with the Traralgon hospital anyway.
“Latrobe Regional Hospital is proposed to be the provider of the most complex care in the Network, supporting the delivery of greater than 85% of care locally over time. We recognise that the western portion of the Network, notably Bass Coast Shire, has significant patient flow patterns to metropolitan Melbourne health services for higher capability care.
“However, many of the service delivery issues experienced in Bass Coast Shire have more in common with the challenges faced by other rural communities than with metropolitan areas. Accordingly, the Committee concluded on balance that Bass Coast Health is better grouped with the rest of Gippsland.”
So, if LRH is ultimately expected to deliver 85% of the care for Gippsland, including South Gippsland and Bass Coast, where that leaves the promised $290 million Stage 2 of the Wonthaggi Hospital is anyone’s guess.
As well as finally releasing the Expert Advisory Committee’s Health Services Plan (April 2024), the government announced a further $1.5 billion which “delivers the funding hospitals told us they needed”.
The State Government has also accepted in full or accepted in principle 26 of 27 recommendations proposed by the Expert Advisory Committee.
The one recommendation rejected was Recommendation 7.1 as follows:
Government consolidate health services under the following model: Each consolidated Local Health Service Network is a single entity with:
• a new, skills-based board with membership that reflects the diversity of its region
• a newly recruited Network chief executive officer
• enduring pre-existing site identities and brands
• visible local leadership
• a single employer that can engage and deploy workforce across sites in accordance with community need
• unified clinical governance and clinical service planning
• unified financial management, corporate governance and back office
• consistent policies and procedures across all health sites, including quality and safety processes
• accountability for care across its entire Network geography.
Among other things, these amalgamated health services would still maintain their own Local Community Boards with community engagement mechanisms established for each health service to provide feedback and advice to local leadership to ensure services meet community needs.
But the Local Community Boards would only act in an advisory capacity.
While the State Government has promised there will be no forced amalgamations, voluntary amalgamations will be considered as will all of the proposals for shared management and shared services proposed by Recommendation 7.1.
“We believe that locals know their community’s health needs best and together with their health service leaders their voices must be listened to in the delivery of local healthcare,” the government said in its announcement on Thursday, August 8.
“Forcing change risks being disruptive, impacting patient care,” they said.
“Instead, health services will be supported to reduce non-clinical duplication and double-up, while at the same time promoting stronger partnerships between our hospitals.
“This achieves the report’s ambition of a more integrated and efficient health system, without disrupting the local services we know Victorian families trust and rely on.”
Minister for Health Mary-Anne Thomas welcomed the adjustment to the report’s recommendations.
“Victoria’s health system is one of the best in the world, and these reforms will keep us on track to deliver even better patient care through a reformed health system that is better integrated and connected, at the same time protecting the local services we know Victorians trust and rely on.”
The shadow health minister, Georgie Crozier, is unconvinced that mergers are off the table.
"Let me tell you this funding only lasts for one year what happens to those health services after that," Ms Crozier said.
