PREMIER Daniel Andrews has given an assurance Mildura Base Hospital (MBH) staff will be no worse off under a public management model.
Mr Andrews, Health Minister Jenny Mikakos and Member for Mildura Ali Cupper on Friday officially announced MBH would return to public hands in September next year, ending Ramsay Health Care’s term running the hospital.
Mr Andrews said staff would be fully briefed throughout the 12-month transition and said it was possible many would be better off under salary packing benefits that would be available to them under the public model.
“I’ve spoken to doctors today, to nurses, to cooks and cleaners, and they’re all very passionate about doing their best for this local community,” he said.
“A not-for-profit public hospital in public hands is the best way for us to achieve that.”
Ms Mikakos said the government wanted to ensure the transition was a smooth as possible.
“I want to reassure the community that the health care services that are on offer now will continue to be available during that 12-month transition period,” she said.
“We’ll be working very closely with staff and the unions to make sure that they get all the information that they need about this transition.
“The staff will transition over to the Mildura Base Hospital once it is a publicly run hospital.
“We will be making sure that we are keeping the staff informed about all the steps in the process. But no staff will be worse off as a result of this process.”
Ms Cupper will chair a community consultative committee that will advise the government on future needs for the hospital, including services and infrastructure, and the government announced $1 million funding to help establish a regional service plan.
Ms Mikakos said a new board of directors would be appointed by the start of next year.
Mr Andrews said he was confident more services and infrastructure could be delivered to MBH in the coming years.
“Health care is not about profits, it’s about patients and it’s about making sure every member of this local community — or those who are visiting this local community — can get the very best care today, tomorrow and indeed that we improve the level of care as part of a constant culture of improvement,” he said.
“Without necessarily criticising anyone who has been working at the hospital, or managing the hospital for the last 20 years, I think we are in the best place to guarantee that continuous improvement.
“We are best placed to build a bigger, better, broader Mildura Base Hospital with more services on offer — so less people have to leave the community that they’ve helped to build — we’re best placed to do that if this public hospital is in public hands.”
Mr Andrews said MBH would be able to build better connections with other hospitals and health services in the state, while the government wanted to ensure Sunraysia residents could get access to better care.
“We don’t want to see people travelling to Melbourne unless they absolutely have to,” he said.
“I don’t want people to have to travel to Adelaide to get their cancer care, for instance, if we might be able to offer more care — cardiac, oncology, whatever the service be — here at the Mildura Base Hospital.
“It’s also about better connecting Mildura Base Hospital with Bendigo, with other public hospitals, and bringing Mildura Base Hospital back into the public system fully means we’ll be able to better connect this health service with all the other health services across this part of the state and indeed specialist services right across Melbourne also.”
Mr Andrews and Ms Mikakos both paid tribute to Ms Cupper’s campaigning and the advocacy from the wider Sunraysia community to have MBH returned to public management.
“(Ms Cupper) made it very clear to me that this was something that just had to happen and that the Mildura community was worth this — that this is part of Victoria and we can’t have a sense that anybody in Sunraysia, in the north-west of Victoria, feels like they are being treated differently than the rest of our state,” Mr Andrews said.
