A PROPOSAL for three of the Wimmera's regional health services to merge with Ballarat Health Services has been submitted to the Victorian Government for approval.
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Under the new proposal, the Wimmera Health Care Group would come together with Ballarat Health Services, Stawell Regional Health and Edenhope and District Memorial Hospital to form a new service under a new health board.
This comes after an extensive public consultation period from the Wimmera Health Care Group, which started discussions about possible amalgamation with Ballarat in late-2020.
Wimmera Health Care Group board chair Marie Aitken said the reason for embarking on amalgamation was to improve health outcomes for the Wimmera.
"Country people have much worse health outcomes than city people. That has actually been the case for quite some time and it is not getting better," she said.
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"We do know that our current system is not working for country people.
"The data tells us that the life expectancy difference between country people and city people is an appalling 18 years.
"That figure doesn't even include first nations people, and the first nations figure is even worse than that.
"It is that kind of critical data, those facts, that is really driving us."
Ms Aitken said the idea to form a new regional health service was born out of the area's COVID-19 response.
"What happened during COVID was the state government brought in a system whereby we all worked in a much more formalised structured way to address COVID," she said.
"As we did that we found that we were working particularly well together, and given that context of the problems we face as a health service, our health services had a light bulb moment that maybe this is the way it should be."
Business Plan
Ms Aitken then called Ballarat Health Service board chair Natalie Reiter, who confirmed her interest in joining forces to form a new health service.
The health department provided tools for the health services to begin an investigation into the amalgamation proposal.
Still, Ms Aitken stressed the Victorian Government did not force the groups' hands into amalgamating.
Following this, the Wimmera Health Care Group contacted every other health service in the Grampians region to be interested in a potentially more comprehensive amalgamation.
A few health services, such as West Wimmera and Rural North West, chose not to continue with the process and have not made their position clear on where they stand with the proposal.
A period of public consultation and due diligence reporting followed, which developed into the proposed amalgamation's business plan.
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Ms Aitken said during the compilation of the business plan, the group looked at many other options, including strengthening the Wimmera Southern Mallee Health Alliance.
"As we worked through the due diligence process it really became clear that those forms of time-limited or contractual arrangements are really what we are already doing. That has really become our business as usual model," she said.
"The Wimmera Southern Mallee Health Alliance, we are still part of that group, and we are keen to continue to work with the alliance.
"The reason that we don't see them as the solution to our problem is that our Wimmera Southern Mallee Health Alliance partners don't routinely provide that same level of care that the sub-regional health services provide.
"We provide a 24/7 emergency department staffed by doctors and senior nurses; we provide intensive care units, we provide theatre and midwifery services.
"So we need to have access to those specialist level services which the smaller health services do not routinely provide.
"For us to get access to that ongoing level of care we really need to be partnering with a larger health service."
Ms Aitken said the group chose to partner with Ballarat Health Services due to its proximity to the Wimmera and familiarity of the community with its hospitals.
The business plan has been put forward to Minister for Health Martin Foley to decide whether or not to approve the project.
Should the health department approve, Ms Aitken estimated the new entity would be announced towards the end of 2021.
"The business case itself is really commercial in confidence. We won't be releasing the full business case, but what we will be doing is sharing as much information as we possibly can and continuing on our stakeholder consultation process," she said.
"A lot of information included in the due diligence and the business case is also available in our annual report, and they are freely available as well."
Jobs
A fundamental principle maintained during the amalgamation talks was that the Wimmera would see no job losses due to a potential merger.
Ms Aitken said the Wimmera Health Care Group was already "desperately seeking more people" and only expects more jobs to be created under the new health service.
"What we anticipate is that more services will mean more jobs, and we wouldn't be going down this path unless that meant more services.
"We can't make long term guarantees about how the changes will take shape regardless of whether or not we become a new entity.
"As you go into the future all organisations change and choose to do things differently at various times in their history."
Ms Aitken also addressed the loss of ancillary services in the Wimmera, contributing to the hospital's primary health roles.
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This comes after a consultancy report from the Wimmera Development Association estimated a $13.6 million loss in economic contribution in the Wimmera if 122 full-time equivalent positions were centralised to Ballarat.
"There will be no loss of services either. We are always going to need laundry services, we are always going to need an admin service, we are always going to need finance and HR," she said.
"They are all core services towards running a health service. And there is no plan to stop any of those services.
"It is equally possible that more services will be located in one of our regions, and the leadership of that role being located in that region. Edenhope, Stawell, Dimboola, Horsham or Ballarat could all be head office for some of these future services at a later date, there is nothing stopping that from happening."
"It could actually very much work in our favour as well to have this new entity that consists of a true, equal partnership where services don't all have to be centralised at the biggest player.
"There will be lots of ways in which the regional voice will be represented in this new entity in a way that I don't think has ever happened in Victoria before.
"The new board is one element of it, and the first board based on the proposal is a nine-member board with four members from the existing health services.
"The remaining five would be drawn from a pool of directors that have been made essentially redundant as a result of the new organisation. In fact the boards are the only jobs that are likely to be impacted by the establishment of the new entity in the first instance."
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