TODAY marks the start of one of the most important countdowns for the Mildura community in many years.
It will be exactly one month until Mildura Base Hospital is returned to public management, ending two decades of the privatisation experiment that has had a huge impact on the standard of patient care.
Hospitals are the heartbeat of a community, and it is that sense of community that underlines the importance of this occasion.
Putting the “public” back into the Mildura Base Public Hospital will not only give us parity with the rest of Victoria, it also allows our hospital to connect more widely with the public health system across the state. The current predicament we face with the South Australian border closure is a testament to the need for better links with the Victorian public hospital network.
For the first time in 20 years, the hospital will have a board made up of local people who are focused solely on us and our health. Not shareholders, not profits.
The board is made up of local people with a wealth of experience in the public health system – they are people who live and work here and who will use the hospital. They will be accountable to us and connect us to the decision-making process.
The hospital will again become a focal point for the community to come together on a volunteering and fundraising level, like the Good Friday appeal, which we can again raise money for all aspects of the hospital’s work.
It will be the little changes that make such a big difference to our experience and will now be able to become part of the hospital’s DNA. That cultural change may not happen overnight, but it will happen.
This could be in the form of a cuddle-cot service for parents who tragically have a stillborn child. Other public hospitals have support dogs in wards or any other range of small services that play a big role in a comfortable hospital stay.
Under the privatised model, these small things were not made available because they were seen as “costs”.
The transition is about the brilliant staff who will now be able to use salary packaging – a simple change that will mean almost $4000 a year additional take-home pay.
There is so much for us to be excited about over the next month and beyond.
It has been a huge fight to get our hospital back, but it was certainly one worth fighting.
Ali Cupper is the Member for Mildura
