Victoria's hospital system will be overhauled after a landmark report found it is no longer fit for purpose. The state government has accepted 26 of the report's 27 recommendations and will create a new agency to deliver frontline care while cutting spending.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00It's a 200-odd page review, an extensive review into Victoria's hospital sector, commissioned
00:09by the Health Department.
00:11And as you mentioned, there are some sobering words in there, including that the hospital
00:15sector here isn't fit for purpose and was under increasing strain and in desperate need
00:20of review.
00:21As you mentioned, 27 recommendations laid out by the authors of this particular report.
00:28One of the key recommendations was that 76 health services across the state be merged
00:33– well, not merged, I shouldn't use that word, we'll get to that a little bit later
00:36– but they form part of this extensive 11-part network across regional Victoria and the city.
00:43So that's five in the city and six in the regions, and as well as that, a new government
00:49agency be formed that will be known as Hospitals Victoria.
00:53Now, the government have said today that this will go a lot of the way to kind of clearing
00:58up the bureaucracy, this malaise of bureaucracy that the hospital sector has been stuck in
01:04in Victoria for quite some time, and will also prioritise frontline workers as well
01:10as services in regional and local parts of the state.
01:15They've also committed an extra $1.5 billion to the hospital sector.
01:19That's in addition to the $8.8 billion that was pledged in the budget a couple of months ago.
01:25Now, when we asked the government where that money's coming from, because as you know,
01:28the state's in significant debt, billions and billions of dollars of debt, the Premier,
01:33Jacinta Allen, wasn't too clear.
01:35She used an expression which was somewhat, perhaps some might say a little bit nebulous,
01:41that the money will come through in the usual way, but we'll find out more about that in
01:47December when the mid-year budget papers come out.
01:50Let's have a quick listen to Jacinta Allen, the Premier of Victoria.
01:53Hospitals Victoria will be a dedicated standalone agency within the Department of Health that
01:59will work directly with hospitals.
02:01It will help support hospitals to have that full focus on patient care instead of the
02:07back-office bureaucracy.
02:10And Elias, what's been the response to these proposed changes today?
02:15So the one recommendation or proposal that was put in this report today that the government
02:22rejected was to merge or amalgamate hospitals to essentially save money.
02:27Now, the government said it will not do that.
02:29It said that it's not in the best interest of patients here in Victoria, but the opposition
02:36says this press conference today, this public announcement by the government, was quote
02:42unquote sneaky and that this will be an amalgamation by stealth.
02:47Let me explain a little bit about that to you, Joe.
02:50So essentially what they're saying is that this $1.5 billion will only really fund hospitals
02:54for the next year or so, and there isn't an ongoing funding pipeline.
02:58So when the money runs out, hospitals will be forced to reduce services, reduce staff
03:03and have to share staff with nearby hospitals anyway, which would effectively be them merging
03:09or a soft merger as they're referring to it as.
03:11Let's have a listen to the Shadow Health Spokesperson, Georgie Crozier.
03:16There's no guarantee by the government that there will not be amalgamations, that those
03:21health services will have to amalgamate.
03:26This is a sneaky move by the government and that's what you're seeing here.
03:30So amalgamation has been a very contentious issue here in Victoria.
03:34Health advocates are staunchly against it.
03:37As I said, the government says it's not going down that path, but the opposition say that
03:42remains to be seen, and as you just heard there, they say this is effectively amalgamation
03:47by stealth.
03:48I guess it's one we'll have to wait and see.