The Palmerston Regional Hospital should never have been built, writes MATT CUNNINGHAM

THE Palmerston Regional Hospital should never have been built when the RDH already isn’t adequate, MATT CUNNINGHAM writes

THE doors of the new Palmerston Regional Hospital opened on Monday.

This event was celebrated as a wonderful achievement.

The truth is that Monday marked a disaster for the future of health services in the Northern Territory.

It’s a triumph of politics over good policy that will have ramifications for decades to come.

The Palmerston Regional Hospital is a microcosm of everything that’s wrong with Territory politics, where decisions are made based on where the votes are cast, rather than where the need exists.

Palmerston is in a political sweet spot.

It’s home to three seats in the NT Legislative Assembly that have traditionally swung between Labor and the CLP.

And at a federal level, it takes in parts of both Lingiari and, more importantly, Solomon, a marginal seat that often falls to the party that wins Government.

The Palmerston Hospital opened on Monday

That’s why Territory and Federal politicians of all stripes have been so keen to support the Palmerston hospital.

But from a policy point-of-view, it makes no sense at all.

Palmerston is just 20 minutes up the road from Tiwi, where the Royal Darwin Hospital sits.

Nowhere else in the country would a city of 130,000 people have two public hospitals such a short distance apart.

RDH is already struggling to cope with demand. Part of the problem is a lack of infrastructure.

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But a bigger problem is a lack of staff.

Don’t believe claims that there is no staff shortage.

The nurses at the Royal Darwin Hospital already endure staff to patient ratios far higher than the rest of the country.

And they’re sent text messages on a regular basis telling them that the hospital is under-staffed and asking them if they will come in and do overtime.

We cannot adequately staff one hospital.

Now, we’re expected to staff two.

Those already stretched staff are going to be stretched further still.

Many have already been told that they cannot work at just one of the hospitals.

Their shifts will be split between RDH and PRH.

Expect sick leave to increase as staff burnout sets in.

It’s also impossible that a new hospital can open without having a major impact on the budget.

The hospital was announced when the Henderson Labor Government was in power here.

And while Territory and Federal Governments both promised cash to build the facility, there was never a budget to run it.

In 2015 the CLP budgeted $25 million per year to run the hospital, a number that was scoffed at by the Labor Opposition Leader Michael Gunner, who said the real cost would be closer to $60 million.

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Since then, further promises of an emergency department and maternity services mean that cost is sure to be higher. Labor and the CLP have both been guilty of contributing to this disaster.

The costs though, will not just be financial.

While the original hospital plan was, wisely, just for non-emergency services, politics has ensured the PRH will have an emergency department.

But if you’re faced with a life-threatening situation, it’s not the place to go.

As the Government’s website states: “If you are critically ill or have a life-threatening condition you will be stabilised and transferred to Royal Darwin Hospital as soon as possible.”

TV ads have been running already, reminding people that if there is actually something seriously wrong with them, they should be heading for RDH.

Palmerston hospital will offer maternity services, but not birthing.

Yet plans have been discussed to move mothers who’ve given birth at Royal Darwin Hospital to Palmerston for a couple of days of recovery.

But surely, if a new mother is well enough to travel from Darwin to Palmerston, she is a well enough to go home.

It costs about $1400 a day to keep a new mother and her child in hospital.

There’s also the cost of transporting people from one hospital to another.

Earlier this year the Government awarded a contract for that transport.

The bill will be $5 million over three years.

Governments of both stripes have ignored warnings from medical experts not to duplicate services at Palmerston.

But as Australian Medical Association President Associate Professor Robert Parker warned in 2015, politics was always going to get in the way.

“There are a number of very marginal seats in Palmerston,” he said.

All of this money is money that could otherwise have been put into our main hospital, or into the woefully under-resourced remote areas.

Remember all the fuss about the PET scanner and cyclotron we needed in Darwin?

A crucial piece of equipment that allows cancer patients to be assessed here, rather than travel interstate?

You could buy at least four of those every year for what it what it will cost to run the Palmerston Regional Hospital.

Instead of building a second-rate second hospital, we should have improved the one we already have, or even lobbied to have a new first-class, full service facility.

Instead, we will spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a second-rate hospital that will pull much-needed funds and human resources away from the ageing hospital that already exists.

All to try and buy a few votes in Palmerston.

What a mess.