OAKESHOTT INDEPENDENT
NATIONAL PARTY ATTACK ON THE PORT HOSPITAL BACK-FIRES ON MARK VAILE
Independent MP for Port Macquarie, Robert Oakeshott, has today labelled the National Party attack on Port Macquarie Base Hospital as a serious error of judgement, and one that exposes the National Party Federal MP to criticism about nursing home beds.
"Firstly, I support the Port Hospital, and I support the difficult decisions the clinicians and administrators have to make. I do not support politicians trying to do their job for them, Mr Oakeshott said.
"The decision to move 14 elderly patients to Kempsey Hospital so as to free up beds at Port Base is one that, in the current environment of limited nursing home beds, I will defend, Mr Oakeshott said.
"Port Macquarie has the biggest medical team in the region, it is the newest of the hospitals in the region, and it is therefore sensible that it shoulders the load for the region in regard emergency and acute patients. Every day, it is receiving acute patients from Kempsey, Wauchope, and all over the Mid-North Coast region. This is symbolic of the hospitals success and status, Mr Oakeshott said.
"To allow this to happen, the networked hospitals of Kempsey and Wauchope are treated as extra beds for Port Macquarie, and it is therefore appropriate that the non-acute, non-emergency patients either recover, or wait, at these two hospitals that are within a forty-five minute radius, Mr Oakeshott said.
"This has been a long-standing arrangement between the three hospitals, and is sensible, Mr Oakeshott said.
"To attack this is to show inexperience in understanding the workings of our local hospital system. And to attack this is to also expose the lack of action the Federal National Party has taken in providing nursing home beds in our local area, Mr Oakeshott said.
"Hospitals should not be nursing homes, and that is what Kempsey and Wauchope hospitals are slowly turning into the longer the Commonwealth fails to provide nursing bed placements in our local area, Mr Oakeshott said.
"I am sensitive to the plight of the various families involved, and I would prefer this had not become a political issue. But now the National Party has raised the issue, they must defend themselves against the charge that they have failed to provide adequate nursing home beds in our local area, which means dislocation to families at a very sensitive stage of life, and means hospitals are left making difficult decisions about non-acute length of stays in hospital beds and trying to answer the question of 'when is long enough for a hospital to be left fulfilling the role that nursing homes should be playing in our local area?'. In this particular case, I think 3 weeks is clinically appropriate, and I defy the National Party to try and clinically argue otherwise, Mr Oakeshott said.
6 March 2007