September 21, 2015
Mayoral candidate – and Glendon Street Medical Centre operator – Mike Brown has slammed Monday’s Private Hospital announcement by Mayor Wayne Kratzmann, saying it was driven by “emotion and ego”.
Mr Brown has put forward an alternative suggestion for the future of the Private Hospital which would involve his medical practice becoming a not-for-profit organisation and shifting into the building.
He has alleged the South Burnett Regional Council has refused to talk to him about his proposal, but Mayor Kratzmann has told southburnett.com.au it is one of several “Plan Bs” which could be considered if the hospital does not re-open.
Mr Brown said Monday’s announcement to investigate Council running the Private Hospital was a waste of ratepayers money and “too little too late”.
He said specialists were already leaving.
“(It is) yet another bad economic decision based on emotion and ego rather than economic fact that will mark his legacy as Mayor,” he said.
Mr Brown said the Mayor was “forcing a private hospital on a population that has already shown that it can’t sustain it”.
“Otherwise it would have remained open and viable by Pulse Health or been re-opened by another operator skilled in managing health facilities in regional areas,” he said.
He said it was not a “commitment to the community, to health and to our residents’ lives” as the Mayor said but rather “another decision made without proper consultation with the community”.
He said the decision was also made without considering the reality of the costs of private health insurance and “without taking into consideration that nearly 80 per cent of the South Burnett population is in the two most disadvantaged socio-economic sectors” and cannot afford private health insurance.
“As a business decision this does not make sense. Our Council needs to be run as a business because house prices are down, businesses are closing and jobs aren’t there and we have had too many mistakes such as Memerambi, accidents at waste facilities, road closures due to poor maintenance and more in areas that are core business areas of the South Burnett Regional Council,” he said.
“In his speech on July 15, Mayor Kratzmann said: ‘The best news I ever told my CEO was that we can’t run the hospital… you can’t run it because its specialists’.
“That is exactly what the Mayor now proposes to do in a total backflip of his previous position because he is not looking at why it closed in the first place from an economic perspective and that is his responsibility as Mayor – not to run a private hospital.
“The Mayor also said on July 15 that: ‘We need to remember this is not another business. This isn’t a business – this is a hospital. We will not get another hospital built in the foreseeable future in the South Burnett, there’s no money’.
“So I ask the Mayor – if there’s no money and it’s not a business – why is he making a Council business decision to spend ratepayers’ money on due diligence when so many other operators, who have already rejected the option of re-opening, combined with a changing population in which many do not have private health insurance, have already provided the answers?”
Mr Brown said he had “repeatedly offered the Mayor and Councillors a solution” to keep specialists visiting to the region.
“(This would) introduce much-needed services for the community that will create jobs at no cost to ratepayers,” he said.
Mr Brown said the the Mayor had “avoided and delayed meeting with him” since he submitted his first proposal to save specialist services to the Mayor and Council in May at the request of Council Economic Manager Phil Harding.
“The Mayor has told me via email that he ‘will continue to work towards an outcome for a full operational Hospital. If this fails to eventuate I will be in touch to discuss your option further’.
“Given that the Mayor and Phil Harding won’t meet with me and both councillors Campbell and Tessman have told me that the management of the private hospital situation is solely with Mayor Kratzmann, I can only conclude that the decision to spend thousands of ratepayers’ money with Ernst & Young, a firm based not just outside the South Burnett, but outside Queensland, is based on the Mayor’s ego.
“Why? Because due diligence already conducted by every hospital operator that has inspected the building for free via their own economic, operational and sustainability assessment has resulted in every one of them declining to re-open and operate the hospital as a non-viable economic and health option.
“I know this as I have spoken to several of the operators who came to look and they all confirmed the same thing with me.
“The answers are already there and costs have already been spent on travel with the Mayor’s own due diligence and solution-seeking, yet more money will be spent unnecessarily with a company that doesn’t understand our regional culture and our needs.
“I want to know from the Mayor if ratepayers would be looking at a hospital levy?
“What will the running costs be? How will the huge amount of equipment that Pulse Health removed as part of their exit be replaced?
“What guarantee will be given to ratepayers that it won’t burden them if all of them won’t have access to it via private health insurance?
“What is the long-term strategy for a Council-run facility created by you if you are leaving office in March? Whose burden does that then become – local fundraisers?”
Mr Brown said the Mayor was “out of touch with the visiting specialists, doctors and the public hospital”.
“The Mayor is worried about losing visiting specialists but most specialists have already confirmed in writing to me that they have relocated their services elsewhere or redirected their appointments to the public hospital, because they could not hold up their business decisions based on no information from council,” Mr Brown said.
“In his speech on July 15, Mayor Kratzmann said: ‘If you actually sit down and do due diligence and work out all the figures and if the Board members that you go to with a provider are made up of accountants and I’m sorry to the accountants that are here today, we can’t win that way’.
“I am calling on the Mayor to listen to the accountants because this decision and all Council decisions need to be based on facts for the benefit of ratepayers.”
Mr Brown said he also rejected the assertion that “the Kingaroy General Hospital is not coping with the loss of the private hospital”.
“Since the Private Hospital closed they have been doing a great job with exemplary and timely paperwork and follow-up to patients in our surgery,’” he said.
“Increased usage of the public hospital in the past few weeks has been due to the closure of General Practices, not the private hospital, as it is primary health care at General Practitioner level that the community needs more of, as well as mental health and fertility services.
“In my talks with doctors they have informed me that their information about the private hospital situation comes from the media, not the Mayor, so they have also been kept in the dark.”
Mr Brown said the community deserved to know the facts about why the private hospital closed and deserved to be given true economic information, not just emotion, for the solutions moving forward.
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Well said, a lot of people in the community do not realise you can’t use the private hospital if you’re not in private health.
To be fair, Charlie, anyone can use a private hospital. However, if you don’t have private health cover or qualify otherwise (eg. a Gold Card), you pay for the service. There are people in the community who don’t have private cover but choose to pay rather than wait for their turn in the public system.