A petition to save Williamstown Hospital’s emergency department has been started, as the state government heads to the High Court to try to keep $73million in funding Victoria must repay the Commonwealth.
The federal government says Victorian hospital activity was incorrectly reported, and that the state was overpaid.
Federal Gellibrand MP Tim Watts started the petition calling on the federal government to reverse hospital funding cuts after being advised by Western Health that it would be forced to close its emergency department.
“Melbourne’s west is growing; we need to ensure access to healthcare and emergency services keeps pace with that growth,” he said.
“Closure of any emergency department will just put more pressure on other busy emergency departments in Melbourne’s west.”
TIM WATTS. PICTURE: EDDIE JIM
Western Health’s acting executive operations director Christine Neumann said nearly $5 million had been ripped out of their budget.
“The flow-on effects of the Commonwealth funding cuts led the Victorian government to recently request information from health services on how they could find very substantial financial savings in the remaining quarter of this financial year,” she said.
“In Western Health’s case, this amounted to almost $5million dollars.
“To find savings of this magnitude in only three months would require extreme cost cutting measures,” Ms Neumann said.
“The potential range of options put forward by Western Health illustrate quite clearly how severe the impacts would be. Western Health does not intend to implement these measures due to their harsh flow-on effect and we request that the Commonwealth restores the funding cuts in the best interests of patients.”
Victorian Health Minister Jill Hennessy said the loss of $73.2 million could soon cause the closure of Williamstown Hospital’s emergency department.
She plans to launch legal action in the High Court to prevent this.
Federal Health Minister Sussan Ley said it was ultimately a matter between Victoria and the administrator at the moment.
