OPINION: Casualties in hospital funding war

If the people of Geraldton and the Mid West were expecting good news on the long-overdue expansion of Geraldton Hospital last week they would have been sorely disappointed.

The hospital is too small – and has been since it was first built 10 years ago.

Doctors know it, the mayor knows it, the State Health Minister Kim Hames knows it, Federal member for Durack Melissa Price knows it – but when will something be done about it?

Mid West health officials have done all they can.

They have given feedback to decision-makers, gone through the painstaking process of lodging paperwork to ask for $100 million to expand the hospital.

Somewhere in Canberra, there is probably a vertical file somewhere containing the funding application.

In all likelihood, it's been sitting there for years.

Federal Health Minister Sussan Ley visited the hospital last week at the invitation of Ms Price, but flatly ruled out giving any money for an infrastructure upgrade.

“It has never been the responsibility of the Federal Government to provide infrastructure funding to maintain State government hospitals,” she said.

If that’s the case, why did State Health Minister Kim Hames in 2013 say it was “unacceptable” when the Labor Federal Government failed to honour what he believed was a promise to fund the $100 million expansion in its Budget?

And why did WA Country Health Service Mid West, which operates Geraldton Regional Hospital, describe the Federal Budget decision as “extremely disappointing”?

At the time, WACHS acting regional director Graham Coleman said the hospital had been told its application had met funding criteria.

Again, in 2013, Dr Hames said he suspected funding was denied for political reasons because Geraldton was in a “strong Liberal Federal electorate”.

In September that same year, the Liberals came to power, so that can’t be used as an excuse anymore.

You might think all this sounds like buck-passing on the part of our elected representatives.

Not Ms Ley.

Asked if the Federal Government was shifting responsibility onto the State and whether this would impact on the development of services for mental health such as a specialised psychiatric unit, Ms Ley said there would be no “buck-passing” between Governments, especially when it came to the provision of mental health services.

“Often in different parts of Australia the level of services we want and need is not there,” she said.

“But this is not about passing the buck; this is about developing a system that allows a person who’s been discharged here at this hospital to be adequately cared for in the community.”

So where does that leave Geraldton?

Dr Ian Taylor, speaking to media two years ago, but whose comments still stand today, described the hospital as “appallingly inadequate”.

But Dr Stuart Adamson, in an interview at the same time, perhaps summed it up best.

He described it as a “crime” that the hospital is a downsized version of what it replaced.

And until the political wrangling ends, the people of Geraldton are the victims of that crime.