I have been contacted by three people who have attempted to attend the Gympie Hospital’s
‘Fracture Clinic’, only to be told it has shut.
What is more contemptible is that for some the Health Department actually rang and booked
their appointment at the clinic.
The health system is in crisis in Queensland – and it is in crisis in Gympie.
We are constantly having services close down.
The closure of the ‘Fracture Clinic’ follows the fiasco caused by the closure of the paediatric
ward last year.
No one is told anything.
This week patients were sent away from their booked appointment and either told to go see
their GP or book an appointment at Sunshine Coast University Hospital – a hospital at the
southern end of the Sunshine Coast.
No advice, no warning to the community let alone to the patients.
How is it on Monday you can be given an appointment for a service, told to have an Xray
beforehand and bring it to the clinic, to then be told to drive with a broken limb more than
100 kilometres away?
The State Government seems to be deliberately running down services at the Gympie
Hospital.
The Master Clinical Services Plan identified that the facilities were old and not fit for purpose
with services fragmented and spread across multiple buildings.
It recommended preparing a business plan for a new hospital on a new site.
The only business plan seems to be to close services with no warning to the public.
This is a systemic problem.
On every measure the problems have been there for years.
You can’t not provide services at the hospital.
Right across the board services are under stress and patients transferred or told to go to the
Sunshine Coast.
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When I’ve raised issues about closed services, I receive evasive answers.
In some cases, services are removed altogether, and no one finds out until they notice a
change in what’s provided or a loss of service.
We’ve had issues in the paediatric ward, ambulance ramping, emergency department,
contraction of services in obstetrics and gynaecology and orthopaedics.
Now we have the closure of orthopaedic services.
These should be frontline services, often the first experience on going to a hospital.
