The future of Adelaide’s Modbury Hospital has been called into question after it was revealed surgeons at the facility are only being offered short-term contracts.
SA Salaried Medical Officers Association (SASMOA) senior industrial officer Bernadette Mulholland said 22 surgeons had either not had their contracts renewed, or had only been offered 12 months, when they would normally get three years.
“It is certainly appearance of death by a thousand cuts,” Ms Mulholland said.
“It’s very distressing for the staff.”
SA Health chief executive officer David Swan said the contract renewals had come while the Government finalises the details of its Transforming Health paper.
Released in February, it outlined plans to make sweeping changes to Adelaide’s metropolitan health system.
“What we’ve done is for some offered 12-month contracts while we finish that planning phase with Transforming Health,” Mr Swan said.
The Salaried Medical Officers Association said 80 doctors at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and the Queen Elizabeth were also being offered short-term contracts.
Ms Mulholland said ongoing uncertainty about the future of SA health services could result in some doctors becoming fed up and leaving the public health system.
Eye centre an ‘inconvenience’ for the blind
Modbury Hospital is to have its emergency department downgraded as part of Transforming Health but the hospital would gain a dedicated centre for elective eye surgery.
Royal Society for the Blind chief executive Andrew Daly said Modbury was an inconvenient location for people who were vision impaired.
“They’d have to navigate from their home to the bus stop, bus stop to the hospital or to the interchange, across the car park, into the hospital, find their way to the treatment rooms, receive the treatment and then somehow reverse the journey,” Mr Daly said.
Opposition health spokesman Stephen Wade said downgrading the emergency department was the first step towards the hospital’s closure.
“This is a double whammy for the emergency department and in my view, is the first step towards the closure of the hospital as a whole,” Mr Wade said.
SA Health said there would still be a range of services throughout the community.
“The majority of services that the community will need, consultation with specialists, ongoing care for their needs, will be provided at a range of locations within the metropolitan area as it is now,” Mr Swan said.
Acting Health Minister Martin Hamilton-Smith was at a community cabinet meeting in the Mid North today.
He said he would get fully briefed about the contract situation on Tuesday morning but agreed that the SASMOA had made “some good points”.