We should close Palmerston Regional Hospital and save hundreds of millions of dollars, writes MATT CUNNINGHAM

AFTER its pre-Christmas disasters, the Territory Government has promised it has a plan for Budget repair early in 2019. Details of this plan, however, are yet to be revealed, writes MATT CUNNINGHAM

Palmerston Regional Hospital should close, according to Matt Cunningham. Picture: Justin Kennedy

AFTER its pre-Christmas disasters, the Territory Government has promised it has a plan for Budget repair early in 2019.

Details of this plan, however, are yet to be revealed.

Whatever decision it makes is unlikely to be popular.

So here’s an idea for an unpopular — but very sensible — move that will save hundreds of millions of dollars over the next five years.

The Government should close the Palmerston hospital.

The hospital was only opened four months ago but it’s already incurring the wrath of health professionals and putting a major drain on the Territory Government’s scarce resources.

Data from the Office of the Commissioner for Public Employment showed the NT Health Department employed an extra 309 staff in the 12 months to September 2018.

This increase came in the midst of a public service hiring freeze.

While the OCPE doesn’t break down those figures, you can bet most of those extra staff have been employed to run the Palmerston hospital.

OPINION: The Palmerston Regional Hospital should never have been built

This Government has been left with a mess created by previous administrations both Territory and Federal, but the truth is the numbers have never really stacked up for a Palmerston hospital.

They might have had we stuck to the original plan for a $110 million low-service facility.

But by the time politicians of both sides outbid one another on their expansion plans — adding emergency departments and birthing suites — the construction cost grew to more than $200 million, and the ongoing operational costs also skyrocketed.

When the politicians cut the ribbon at the Palmerston Regional Hospital on August 27 last year, they opened a facility they knew they could not afford to operate.

This was confirmed in a report released just a few days later.

Auditor-General Julie Crisp found the $25 million the Government had budgeted to run the hospital was well short of what was required. This should have been no surprise to the Government.

When in Opposition, Chief Minister Michael Gunner scoffed at the CLP when for budgeting $25 million to run the Palmerston hospital saying the real cost would be closer to $60 million.

It’s little wonder then that the Health Department is staring down the barrel of another major budget blowout.

Health Minister Natasha Fyles says there is a plan for budget repair, but says “you can’t go closing emergency departments, you can’t close services”.

But maybe sometimes you should — especially when it’s those services that are potentially putting lives at risk.

While the budget mess the Palmerston hospital has created is a disaster, a greater concern is the impact it is having on the dedicated health professionals trying to deliver the best possible services under difficult circumstances.

Late last year Australian Medical Association NT president Rob Parker warned someone could die if there wasn’t a sufficient budget to run both Palmerston and Royal Darwin hospitals.

He warned a lack of budget foresight meant supplies and staff were being stretched over the two hospitals, affecting the standard of care staff can give to patients.

There’s an argument the Commonwealth should give the NT extra money to run the Palmerston hospital, but that’s unlikely to happen given the competing health funding priorities in other states.

For example, there’s currently a campaign to build a new hospital near the second Sydney airport at Badgerys Creek, where the population is expected to grow to more than 1 million people in the next decade.

That would likely take priority over our need to staff a new hospital that’s 20 minutes up the road from the existing one.

It would make no sense to mothball a brand new $200 million building. But the infrastructure at Palmerston could be put to good use.

On any given day there are about 40 to 50 patients in beds at the Royal Darwin Hospital who really shouldn’t be there.

They’re mostly elderly patients who should be in a nursing home, but there aren’t enough nursing home beds in Darwin to cater for them.

The Palmerston hospital could be turned into a state-of-the-art nursing home, delivering a much-needed service for elderly Territorians, and freeing up the time of doctors and nurses at the Royal Darwin Hospital who at present must attend to these people as part of their rounds.

Of course, this will never happen. Instead, our health budgets will continue blowing out, our doctors and nurses will be stretched to the limit, and the Palmerston hospital will stand as a monument to the triumph of politics over good policy.