Axe Mega Area Health Services - Give Hospitals Back to Their Communities

27 April 2009

“There is a groundswell of support across country and coastal NSW for the axeing of the State Labor Government’s failed Mega-AHS-Without-Boards model for our health system and for Health District Boards to be set up so communities can reclaim ownership of their hospitals and to re-empower local decision-makers.
This was stated by the Liberal & Nationals Parliamentary Secretary for Rural Health, and Chair of the Opposition’s Rural Health Task Force, Jenny Gardiner, upon confirmation that an incoming Liberal & Nationals Government will reform Labor’s vast eight Area Health Services which have no boards.

“From Broken Hill to Byron Bay; from Tweed Heads to Tumbarumba, communities, doctors, nurses and patients are crying out for radical surgery on Labor’s geographically vast and unmanageable Area Health Services.

“A Liberal & Nationals Government will take the knife to massively unpopular health structures like the four that have failed to properly serve country and coastal NSW – the Greater Western, Greater Southern, North Coast and Hunter New England Area Health Services.  They’ll be replaced by smaller, community-focussed Health Districts.

“It’s well understood in cities and towns from Bathurst to Broken Hill and throughout southern NSW, for example, that there’s nothing ‘Greater’ about their Area Health Services.  In fact, the bigger they’ve become, the bigger their crises. 

“The time has come for the Mega-Area Health Services to be broken up and local clinicians and managers re-empowered so that decisions, many of which affect the quality of care for patients, can be made speedily, with local priorities in mind.

“It’s time for Health District Boards, comprised of well-qualified members, to be established so accountability and transparency is a feature of the NSW health system – and decisions can be made according to local priorities.

“Time and again, we’ve learned that ‘bigger is not necessarily better’.  That’s true of the NSW hospital system which the Garling Report said is on the brink of collapse.

“To bring the NSW hospital system back from the brink and ensure many of the excellent recommendations in Garling can be implemented on solid foundations, the Mega-AHSs have to go and be replaced by smaller Health Districts with boards,” Ms Gardiner said.