Palmerston Hospital stands as a triumph of politics over sensible policy, writes MATT CUNNINGHAM

I’VE said it before and I’ll say it again. The Palmerston hospital was a waste of money and should be repurposed as something useful

The Palmerston hospital was a waste of money and should be repurposed as something useful, writes Matt Cunningham

• PALMERSTON Hospital ‘making RDH bed crisis worse’: Top doc
• OPINION: Palmerston Hospital should never have been built
• PALMO Hospital: ‘Close it’ and save hundreds of millions of dollars
• PUBLIC service staffing blowout blamed on Palmerston Hospital

BRICKBATS and bouquets are to be expected when you write a weekly newspaper column.

But there’s one topic that’s been covered here on occasion that you can guarantee will attract more criticism than any other.

It’s the Palmerston Regional Hospital.

Twelve months ago I wrote that the Government should close the Palmerston hospital — a sequel to an earlier piece that said the hospital should never have been built.

The online insults came thick and fast.

There was the usual Berrimah line stuff, questions about my sanity and accusations of insulting the hard-working staff.

“This is possibly the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard. Idiot,” wrote one person on Facebook.

“Have knowledge of medical needs and daily care requirements Matt, do you ?????” asked another.

The answer to this question is obviously no, but my thoughts on the Palmerston hospital didn’t just come to me while sitting in my mum’s basement thinking of ways I could stir the pot.

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It’s a view that’s been informed by dozens of discussions with former politicians on both sides of the fence, and, more importantly, medical professionals who work in the Top End hospital system.

Without fail, everyone who knows anything about the Palmerston hospital will tell you it’s made the delivery of health services worse, not better.

With Royal Darwin Hospital full to overflowing, the Government has tried to convince us that the Palmerston Hospital is helping to relieve some of that pressure.

But the spin doctors were called out by a real doctor during a press conference this week.

At what was supposed to be a media event about how RDH was preparing for New Year’s celebrations, emergency medical director Didier Palmer let slip that the hospital was again under massive strain.

He was then asked a simple question.

Had the Palmerston hospital helped relieve some of the bed pressure?

His answer was telling.

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A massive truth-bomb that finally made public what frustrated doctors and other medical staff have been saying privately since the Palmerston hospital opened almost 18 months ago.

“It creates more demand in some ways,” he said. “It’s a different sort of hospital, it’s a hospital which is a stand-alone emergency department with some low acuity wards.”

What this means is that many of the seriously ill or injured people who present at the Palmerston emergency department end up having to be transferred — at a cost of more than $1.3 million a year — to RDH.

Services are doubled up and costs are increased.

The cost of building the Palmerston hospital blew out from the original $110 million to more than $200 million. Last year the NT Government budgeted $24 million to run the hospital but insiders say this budget has been blown and then some.

When the government revealed late last year that it had blown its public service cap after previously blowing its public service freeze, it pointed to the 120 extra staff it had needed to hire for the Palmerston hospital.

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All of this extra cost might be justified if it meant better delivery of health services.

But, as Dr Palmer, revealed this week, that’s not what’s happening. We’ve spent hundreds of millions of dollars to make the Top End’s hospital system less efficient.

None of this will be news to Health Minister Natasha Fyles.

For every doctor or nurse who’s complained to me about the Palmerston hospital, there’d be a dozen who has raised concerns with the Minister.

Most of them live in her electorate.

This mess, of course, is not of Fyles’s making. It belongs to previous governments, CLP and Labor, Territory and Federal.

But it’s now Fyles’s job to try and fix it. In the short term the Palmerston hospital could be repurposed as a mental health facility and/or a nursing home.

Up to 40 beds at RDH are permanently filled with people who should be in an aged care facility but can’t access a position.

Long term, Palmerston could then be developed to be Darwin’s main hospital, eventually replacing RDH.

So who does the Government listen to?

The doctors and nurses on the frontline, or the swinging voters of Palmerston?

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Less than eight months out from an election you can bet it will be the latter.

If Labor loses the Palmerston seats of Drysdale and Brennan it can kiss goodbye to its majority.

And so the Palmerston hospital will remain, draining the budget and putting more strain on already overworked hospital staff.

It stands as a triumph of short-term politics over sensible policy.