The closure of the ‘Fracture Clinic’ at Gympie Hospital will significantly disadvantage Cooloola Coast patients.
Right across the board services are under stress and patients are transferred or told to travel 100
kilometres to a hospital at the southern end of the Sunshine Coast.
Those from the Cooloola Coast have even further to travel.
Already patients from the Cooloola Coast are forced to travel significant distances for many
basic health care treatments.
They have had to travel to appointments not only in Gympie but as far away as Brisbane and
the Sunshine Coast to the south, and Hervey Bay in the north.
Cooloola Coast Medical Transport does a wonderful job transporting patients to medical
facilities out of town but the closure of another service at Gympie Hospital means that it will
put even more pressure on the volunteer organisation.
The closure of the fracture ward follows the fiasco caused by the closure of the paediatric
ward last year.
No one is told anything.
You can’t keep running down and closing services at the hospital.
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.
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 it’s the closure of orthopaedic services.
These should be frontline services, often the first experience when going to a hospital.
Last year we had to petition against the closure of the paediatric ward.
Now I have sponsored a petition against the closure of the fracture clinic and the systemic
reduction of services at the Gympie Hospital.
The E-Petition link is: https://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/Work-of-theAssembly/Petitions/Petition-Details?id=3754
This E-Petition closes on 28 August 2022.
