CORANGAMITE MP Darren Cheeseman has explosively called for the volunteer board of Colac’s hospital to resign after it cut Colac’s overnight emergency care service.
MP calls for hospital board heads
Corangamite MP Darren Cheeseman has called for Colac Hospital's board to resign.
8 Responses to “MP calls for hospital board heads”
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Colac will become a health back water if state health minister doesn’t over turn board desicion.
Colac: Don’t get ill here overnight.
Yep, that slogan will bring the tourists.
I couldn’t make the meeting last night as i had children to look after, but it was obviously a political stunt on the part of all but the community. X blames Y who blames Z who blames X and I avoids blaming anyone or indeed saying anything at all.
What we need is people who are not playing political games with our lives. A child’s life is not equal to scoring a political point against your opponent.
Iles on the other hand has no other solutions, is not willing to listen to or discuss other options and it will take someone dying, probably a child, for the emergency department to reopen.
Now we all have to hope that death will not be someone we know.
I attended the meeting the urgent care meeting and like the majority of attendees left with no evidence of a solution and no specific answers to questions. The question everyone wanted answered was simple. It is 2, 0 clock in the morning and i have chest pain. I don’t know if it is indigestion or a heart attack but i am scared. I ring an ambulance which is already en route to Geelong with another patient. What do I do? Who do I call?
Immediate intervention is critical in a heart attack but i don’t happen to have oxygen at home, or morphine or access to an intravenous infusion. What do I do? What do Colac community residents do in this situation.
What is the specific plan Mr Isles? Will the urgent care doors be open or not? Who is going to determine if my chest pain is life threatening or not? Would that be Mr Isles, the Board, Mr Mulder, Mr Cheeseman, Ted Ballieu or Julia Gillard?
I note that no one on the Board or Mr Isles have any clinical expertise or knowledge. How then could they possibly understand the clinical impact on the community? Nor did they show any respect for clinicians opinions as they did not even consult them before making this decision.
It is appalling that CAH has been led into this critical position. It is not just the recent $255K deficit, who allowed, led the service into a deficit?
The community want specific answers to specific questions and above all action.
Hear hear
I couldn’t agree more. The Board are just Liberal Party patsies willing to play politics with the health of the Colac community.
Phil one day I hope to meet you. Obviously from your comment you have never met me or probably any members of the CAH Board.
Chris I’ve met you, and we have friends in common.
I’m very disappointed you never raised any concern *publicly* about the deficits in the past, or the state government funding cuts.
And to see you here on Colac Herald attacking Cheeseman because he raised the issue of mismanagement, the failure of the board to consult with doctors, ambulance, emergency services or the community really stinks. Then to see you post on Sarah Henderson’s facebook page being all nice and chummy, well actions speak louder than words Chris: what have you done ?
The emergency department should not be closed: it was a decision that should never have been made. The board, and especially Iles need to be held accountable for that.
This issue has been clouded by bad reporting from the Colac Herald from the outset. Today’s “unsigned” editorial just emphasizes the Colac Heralds bias in this matter, which has done nothing but whip up political stir. I even read in one article today the Herald reporting the cut was 1.6 **billion** from the federal government.
Thankfully other papers are printing more accurate and level headed information.
The facts are both the State and Federal governments have cut funding: but both have actually increased funding over the years too. We just have to look at the facilities we have in Colac to see the real spending increases. The problem is the day to day running of CAH is impacted by these cuts. Across the state, the 600 million in the state budget means things are tight. The 100 million cut from federal government although less, hurts a lot because it is partially retrospective. This is further compounded by the State government putting significantly tighter caps on hospital budget deficits. If the state government imposed the same restrictions on CAH last year we would have had to find 750K cuts due to the one million dollar deficit they had. These tighter deficit caps are causing the problem to be immediate rather than manageable.
So apart from demanding more money all the time, some real solutions are:
1. Have the federal government remove the retrospective portion (about $40 million across the state), or have it offset in future allocations, thus making it easier to budget for.
2. Have the state government increase the allowable deficit this year, postponing the bringing in of their tighter restrictions.
Once we have things operational again, the focus needs to be back on the management an the losses they have had us running at over the last couple of years. CAH has been running at unsustainable losses. Issues such as an extra 250K in executive payments in a year when CAH was running at a one million dollar loss need to be addressed.
But most of all, the fact Iles (and the board) decided to cut emergency department hours without consulting with the community, without consulting doctors or ambulance: this is disgraceful. And for this alone they should be sacked.