MILDURA’S state MP has publicly attacked the management of Mildura Base Public Hospital, suggesting financial mismanagement and saying it had lost the public’s confidence.
Nationals Member for Mildura Jade Benham this week used State Parliament to launch her attack, then followed up with a scathing column in the Opinion section of Saturday’s Sunraysia Daily and a separate release to all media.
Having said a week ago that she would raise in parliament the ongoing plight of Mildura’s undersized and overburdened emergency department, Ms Benham used a constituency question to claim that the hospital’s budget was in deficit by $23 million and that there had been “a noticeable decline in community confidence” in the health facility.
In her regular Sunraysia Daily column, she then cited a series of quotes, purported to be from unnamed constituents and labelled as “consistent messaging”, to support her claims of public dissatisfaction.
Ms Benham said hospital admissions were down 12 per cent, births down 14 per cent and dialysis treatments down 6 per cent.
She told Sunraysia Daily the hospital’s annual report was the source of the statistics.
According to the reports from the COVID-affected 2021-22 and 2022-23 financial years, there was a 6 per cent decrease year-on-year in renal dialysis treatments.
However, births were down only 7 per cent, falling from 827 to 772, and the number of “people who were admitted to our hospital” was down 11 per cent.
Not mentioned by Ms Benham was a 26 per cent increase in specialist outpatient appointments, a 13 per cent increase in emergency-department arrivals, a 14 per cent increase in surgical operations performed, or a 14 per cent increase in oncology and day services treatments.
Ms Benham correctly said there had been “no increase” in ambulance arrivals, which were down 24 last financial year on the 6867 reported in 2021-22.
The annual reports only include data up to June 2023, so contain no information from the past eight months.
Going back two years, births were up 15 per cent, admissions up 24 per cent and dialysis up 22 per cent between 2020-21 and 2022-23.
In her column, she said that “the Mildura Base Public Hospital is willing to give very little away to the public that it serves”, presumably in reference to a recent meeting involving herself, Opposition health spokesperson Georgie Crozier and hospital chief executive Terry Welch, after which she said Mr Welch was “not forthcoming with any data or information that could help our cause”.
A hospital spokesperson said at the time that Mr Welch had been unable to provide confidential information to the two Opposition MPs, who had been referred to the Health Department.
Asked for comment regarding Ms Benham’s latest claims, the hospital also referred Sunraysia Daily to the department.
A department spokesperson said data on which Ms Benham based her deficit claims was “simply a quarterly update”.
“As health services are funded based on predicted activity levels, higher demand can result in temporary deficits for some. When this occurs, we deliver more funding to our health services,” the spokesperson said.
“Across Victoria and post-COVID, there has been an increase in Victorians presenting to emergency departments sicker than they have before. This means patients are staying longer, which has an impact on the wait times in EDs.”
