Doctors sign up to save Mona Vale Hospital’s emergency department
TWENTY doctors on the northern beaches have put their names to a statement saying patients will be at risk when Mona Vale’s Emergency Department closes.
Manly
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TWENTY doctors on the northern beaches have put their names to a statement saying patients will be at risk when Mona Vale’s Emergency Department closes.
The GPs and other medical practitioners are based in Mona Vale, Newport and Avalon, but not working at the hospital,
All five doctors from the Newport Medical Centre have signed the statement written by Save the Mona Vale Hospital Committee.
The statement says: “As a practising doctor in the northern beaches, I consider it is essential that Mona Vale be a level 3 hospital with an emergency department, surgery, maternity ward and other acute services. If the new Northern Beaches Hospital becomes our nearest facility, patients requiring resuscitation, anaphylaxis and other critical support will be at risk.”
One of the GPs who signed was Dr Hanns Lim, who owns Newport Medical Dental. He said “every minute counts” in an emergency and that for people in the north of the peninsula Mona Vale Hospital was quicker to get to than Frenchs Forest.
He also said that on Thursday night he drove a patient who was stable but distressed due to a rapid heart rhythm, to Mona Vale’s Emergency Department.
“There’s no doubt that it is handy to have an Emergency Department close by,” he said.
He also said the north of the peninsula was already struggling to recruit enough GPs and the loss of acute services to the area would be another blow.
He said many GPs in the area were retiring and he could not get young doctors to work or move to Newport, probably because of the cost of real estate.
He said he had seven vacant GP rooms at his practice and he knew of other centres who were struggling to recruit too, meaning GP coverage was patchy at best.
Dr Suzanne Daly from Newport Medical Centre also signed the statement.
She said patients would be in the ridiculous situation of having to self-diagnose and decide for themselves which hospital they should go to.
Dr Daly said that she had a case of where mild asthma became severe very quickly, resulting in her having to give CPR until paramedics arrived.
Save Mona Vale Hospital group said statistics from the NSW Health Department showed that of 35,033 presentations to Mona Vale Hospital in the Year 2016-17, 144 needed resuscitation immediately, 4,729 needed help within 10 minutes for life-threatening conditions and another 12,588 needed to be seen within 30 minutes.
Dr Andy Ratchford, Emergency Director at Mona Vale Hospital said: “The new Northern Beaches Hospital will enable patients with serious medical conditions, previously taken by ambulance to Royal North Shore Hospital, to receive healthcare closer to home.
“The Mona Vale Hospital’s new Urgent Care Centre will be a free, walk-in service open 24/7 and staffed by current Emergency Department clinicians.
“Patients needing more complex care will be looked after and safely transferred by ambulance from the Urgent Care Centre to the new Northern Beaches Hospital.”
•Meanwhile, the tender process is underway for the next phase of major infrastructure works at Mona Vale Hospital.
The main works contract will include the construction of a new inpatient building to accommodate a dedicated inpatient palliative care unit and a specialist inpatient geriatric evaluation and management unit.