AS WE lead into Christmas I want to let people in the Tenterfield community know how we are working to restore the Tenterfield Hospital to a hospital that once had the right amount and mix of staff to care for patients well.
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I applaud the staff there now who are working in unsafe conditions and who do their utmost best to care for their community.
They deserve better and so do the people and families who need to go to their hospital.
The downhill decline of the hospital that has happened over the past two decades is nothing short of negligent.
I was shocked to find what little service was on offer when I was elected the State Member for Lismore. I was more shocked to find that they had got rid of a staff member across one shift per day. The staffing formula had been what is called 3 by 2 by 2. It was reduced to 2 by 2 by 2. I appealed directly to the Hunter New England Local Health District Chief Executive Michael Di Rienzo, who did not know about this nurse reduction and he restored it.
The NSW Nurses and Midwives Association caught wind of it and then demanded that it be restored to a decade earlier formula of 3 by 3 by 3. The community backed that call as did I, and I took that to the NSW Health Minister along with the Mayor and Deputy Mayor.
We also took to the Minister the fact that people get transferred not across the NSW-Queensland border but to Glen Innes, Armidale and sometimes to Newcastle, the last place they want to be when they can be closer to home treated equally well in the Queensland hospitals.
We had monthly phone meetings to discuss these and other issues, and to date we have not been able to get the HNELHD to change any practices. We hear that they will not, as it will cost money to cross the border, not enough patients turn up at the hospital, etc.
Patients cross the border anyway and use Stanthorpe Hospital as their local hospital as they do not want to go to Tenterfield and I am further told some GPS recommend they do that.
I have spent the past year working with the local community and the Health District, with the support of the NSW Minister for Health, to secure better services so staff could give better care.
This work has been disrupted by COVID, but I now plan to establish a working group in Tenterfield in January aimed at revisiting all of these issues to find lasting solutions.
I will keep the community informed of progress but in the meantime I urged locals to make submissions to the Parliamentary Inquiry into Rural and Regional Health by the extended deadline of Friday, 15 January 2021. Follow this link.
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