Big City Hospitals Braced For Cuts
Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday September 3, 1996
The Prince of Wales and Prince Henry hospitals will lose 100 beds and 290 full-time staff positions between them under a finalised proposal to cut more than $24 million from the health budget of south-east Sydney.
The plan will also see the closure of the Prince of Wales's ophthalmology unit, its lithotripter - used to treat kidney stones - and 14 of the 25 in-patient drug and alcohol rehabilitation beds at the Langton Centre in Surry Hills.
Sydney Hospital's emergency department will also be downgraded to a GP service.
Neither St George nor St Vincent's hospitals would bear any of the South-Eastern Sydney Area Health Service's $12 million resource distribution formula cuts, designed to move money to less established hospitals in Sydney's south-west and rural areas.
"Overall there will be some reduction in access (to hospitals for patients in the area)," said Dr Stuart Spring, the service's chief executive.
The plan, along with a similar proposal from the board of the Northern Sydney Area Health Service, will go to a State-wide consultative committee for approval on Friday, then to the Minister for Health, Dr Refshauge, who will deliver his final approval by next week.
Dr Refshauge is already considering a proposal from the Central Sydney Area Health Service which recommends $8 million be cut from Royal Prince Alfred (RPA) Hospital's budget and $4 million from Concord Hospital's.
Dr Richard West, chairman of RPA's medical board, said this would remove 70 beds and close four operating theatres at RPA and the Rachel Forster Hospital.
These are the final stages of a process begun in June, when Dr Refshauge announced sweeping cuts to the more established Sydney hospitals so more money could be given to those in outlying urban and country areas.
That initial proposal, which included moving St Vincent's Hospital to the St George Hospital campus at Kogarah, was overturned by the Premier. A committee was set up to examine how to redistribute resources. Cabinet also approved an extra $100 million for the health budget.
The chairman of the Sydney Hospital medical council, Dr John Graham, said Sydney was being expected to bear cuts of about 20 per cent beyond next year, while Prince of Wales and Prince Henry would be hit with cuts of only about 5 per cent.
Sydney Hospital, which came in $800,000 under budget last year, was being made to pay for "the less than efficient management" of Prince of Wales and Prince Henry, which recorded a combined budget overrun of $4 million, he said.
Dr John Matheson, director of the Prince of Wales's Institute of Neurological Sciences, said the hospital's research output was four times as big as St Vincent's and St George's combined, yet "this is the one being attacked to protect silly little cottage hospitals".
Dr Refshauge said he had asked for funding proposals to be submitted and this did not mean the ideas would be accepted.
WHAT SYDNEY'S SOUTH-EAST IS LOSING
The final proposal for cuts to the south eastern Sydney health area was approved at a board meeting on Monday night and ratified by a consultative committee (called the Special Reference Group) yesterday.
It recommends a total saving of about $24 million this financial year. Because much of the year has gone, those savings are closer to $38.5 million, from an available budget of $560 million.
The principal measures to achieve the cuts are:
* Closing the Prince of Wales ophthalmology unit and transferring its services to the unit at the Sydney Eye Hospital.
* Closing 14 of the 25 in-patient beds at the Langton Centre, Sydney's only inner-city specialist drug and alcohol detoxification centre. Up to six of those beds will be moved to Sydney Hospital.
* Closing the State's only public lithotripter service (which smashes kidney stones without invasive surgery) at Prince of Wales. Services will instead be contracted out.
* Moving some elective orthopaedic surgery from Prince Henry to Sydney Hospital. The professor of orthopaedic surgery at St George will spend one day a week at Sydney.
* Downgrading Sydney Hospital's emergency department to a general practice-style service, open only 12 hours a day.
* Sydney Hospital will lose about $2 million this year and $5 million the next, a total of 10 beds and 85 full-time equivalent staff positions.
* St George Hospital will lose 30 full-time equivalent positions and four beds as its budget is cut by $1 million this year and $2 million the next.
© 1996 Sydney Morning Herald
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