Former Ipswich Hospital Emergency Services director,
Dr Stephen Brierley, said expanding the hospital would
be more efficient than building a new facility at Springfield.
IPSWICH Hospital should be expanded before public funds are provided to build a hospital in Springfield, according to an emergency medicine specialist.
Dr Stephen Brierley, who was director of emergency at Ipswich Hospital for 13 years before leaving last week, said he believed a second hospital in the region could split resources and lead to staffing problems.
The Springfield Land Corporation is in negotiations with Queensland Health and is seeking bipartisan support from federal politicians to help fund a hospital in Springfield, which it hopes to open by 2013.
Dr Brierley said he believed it would be better to have Ipswich Hospital redeveloped so it could provide a high level of service to Ipswich and Springfield.
“I know there’s been a lot of a political pressure for a hospital at Springfield, but you lose so many synergies and economies of scale when you build a second hospital,” Dr Brierley said.
“You have to staff them with emergency positions, paediatricians, and obstetricians and gynaecologists who all end up with lousy rosters and they can’t attract staff.”
Raynuha Sinnathamby, deputy managing director of the Spring- field Land Corporation, said her group would still build a primary health care centre with Mater Health Services if public patient funding was not available, but would prefer to build a day hospital with government-funded public beds.
She refuted claims it would have trouble attracting staff and said they were looking to have the primary health centre or hospital opened by 2013, the same year a rail line to Springfield will open.
“If you look at the ABS low series projections for this corridor, by 2016 we’re expecting another 60,000 people to move to the area; that’s equivalent to the population of Rockhampton moving here,” she said.
“When it comes to existing facilities, it can be cheaper and have less impact on services to start with a greenfield development than to disrupt facilities already in place.
“We are not seeking to import doctors into Ipswich; we are creating a great residential environment for them here and encouraging them to live and work in Greater Springfield.”
Queensland Health’s acting deputy director general of health infrastructure and planning, Faileen James, said a working group of officials from her department were in talks with Springfield Land Corporation.
“That working group is actively participating in discussions regarding public and private health sector service provision at Springfield. Queensland Health will give serious consideration to any recommendations the working group makes,” she said.
Meanwhile, Queensland Health officials are still planning a $122 million, 90-bed expansion to the Ipswich Hospital that is due for completion in 2016. Another $6.7 million will expand the hospital’s emergency department.
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COMMENT: Dr Stephen Brierley might be the smartest medico Ipswich has ever had but he is off track when it comes to the positioning of the city's hospitals. Springfield developer Maha Sinnathamby has had a vision for almost 20 years of a development - bigger than the City of Rockhampton - where all necessary services and facilities are provided to the 86,000 people who will call Springfield home. The establishment of a public hospital facility at Springfield Central in conjunction with the planned Mater Hospital facility at Springfield's Health City would make sense for the residents of Ipswich's eastern suburbs. Even from Goodna, it is a 32km round trip into Ipswich to get to the Ipswich Hospital with public transport which is rated as fair. Dr Brierley should remember that small hospitals are capable of providing quality, local care. His desire for an ever-increasing hospital conglomerate high on Denmark Hill is not in the best interests of all of the citizens of Ipswich.
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