Cairns and Hinterland Hospital and Health Service housing crisis problems affecting workforce

Cairns’ health service is the latest organisation to bear the brunt of the region’s housing crisis as officials reveal homing their massive workforce has become “a significant issue”. Read what they said.

Cairns’ health service is the latest organisation to bear the brunt of the region’s housing crisis as officials reveal homing their massive workforce has become “a significant issue”.

Cairns and Hinterland Hospital and Health Service allied health executive director Tania Cavanagh at the Cairns Chamber of Commerce November Business Luncheon on Tuesday said finding workers had become extremely difficult.

“The other significant issue for us is accommodation for staff,” Ms Cavanagh said.

“Sometimes we can get the staff, but we can’t keep them because the market is very, very tight.”

Ms Cavanagh said she would be interested to hear of any initiatives or opportunities that could create more accommodation for staff.

Cairns and Hinterland Hospital and Health Service allied health executive director Tania Cavanagh revealed housing problem was an issue at the Cairns Chamber Luncheon on Tuesday. Picture: Andreas Nicola

“The workforce and accommodation challenges are obviously more acutely felt, we’ve always had some difficulty attracting and retaining staff – probably more attracting staff,” she said.

“Usually once people get here they love the place … it’s a fabulous place to live.

“Combined with the accommodation shortage it does make it very hard to get people here.

“What we could always rely on is there was lots of tourism and other Share house and short-term accommodation facilitations. We could always rely on getting people up and working something out in a couple months but this seems to be less the case now.”

Ms Cavanagh said 6911 local people were employed by the health service, contributing to $845m in wages.

Another key issue for the hospital, Ms Cavanagh said, was the difficulty accessing GPs in the area, resulting in increased demand for the emergency department’s services.

Cairns Chamber of Commerce president Enver Selita said it was a problem the business community was facing.

She said there were 86,290 emergency department presentations in the 2021-22 financial year.

Cairns Chamber of Commerce president Enver Selita said housing was a challenge the business community had been facing.

“It is a challenge to get across and something we’ve been working as a chamber,” he said.

Cairns Region Jobs Committee chairperson Jodie Duignan-George said the committee had been working on a solution.

Ms Duignan-George said the region also had extremely low unemployment.

The luncheon heard the committee was working through a lot of data to understand the region and what kind of workforce training strategies can be put in place.

“We are developing a website that will be under Chamber of Commerce, which will be a one-stop shop, we are a few months away from launching that,” she said.

Originally published as Cairns and Hinterland Hospital and Health Service housing crisis problems affecting workforce