Angliss Hospital
Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (18:03:573:): (1445) My adjournment matter is for the attention of the Minister for Health, and it is in relation to the Angliss Hospital, where it was reported some weeks ago that the ICU was to close for works. I have spoken to a number of people at the Angliss who are very concerned about the closure. I have been subsequently told this afternoon that there is going to be a delay to these works of up to five weeks and the planned closure of 3 March will now happen sometime in April. What is concerning to those clinicians working in this area is what it will do to patient outcomes, with travel times of up to 40 minutes to get a patient to the Box Hill ICU, and how it will impact on the Angliss Hospital emergency department. What has been raised with me is that the emergency department at Angliss Hospital is already understaffed and under huge stress. There has been a huge amount of uncertainty about staff that work in the ICU department. Some are going to have to be redeployed to Box Hill and other areas to cater for when this closure occurs. But the uncertainty really is around whether it will actually reopen. It services a huge area, it provides great care to that community, and the concern from clinicians that are working at the Angliss Hospital is that they do not have confidence in the government that it will actually reopen.
Given those delays with the redevelopment – it was to commence in just a few days time – and given the delays in what is going to happen with the ICU when it is closed to undertake those works, the action I seek is for the minister to guarantee that that intensive care unit will actually reopen, whenever those works start and are completed, because there seems to be a huge amount of uncertainty about anything that is going on at the Angliss Hospital at the moment.