THE appointment of the board for the Mildura Base Public Hospital this week was another significant milestone.
Ten directors, who between them have a wide range of experience in health care, were appointed by the State Government after a recruitment process by the Department of Health and Human Services.
This is no mean feat – after years of advocacy from our community, this is the first time in more than 20 years Mildura has had a community-based board overseeing our local hospital.
One of the benefits of having a community-based board is that these directors will be far more sensitive to the needs of our community because they are part of our community.
We are talking about a board which will actually be able to make decisions – not just an advisory board that gives feedback to management.
We, through the State Government, own our hospital again and we now have a direct conduit to the hospital’s management. The government is also directly accountable for how our hospital cares for us.
Every cent can be reinvested into services to improve the health of our community and we can again fundraise for our hospital with confidence that those funds are going directly to caring for our community.
I welcome the 10 new board members: chair Mary Rydberg, Glenis Beaumont, Fiona Devilee, Neth Hinton, Kashif Hayat, Maria Mahony, Quentin Norton, Paul O’Neill, Tony Alessi and Frank Piscioneri – and look forward to working with them as we head towards the September 15 handover and beyond.
As chair of the community consultative committee, I found it encouraging to hear Ms Rydberg this week saying community input would be crucial through the transition period and beyond as far as identifying health care service needs at the hospital.
Having been hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic, the committee is looking forward to ramping up its work in identifying and providing feedback to both the government and the new board on the community’s expectations and health service needs for the hospital.
