Moree Hospital without onsite doctor again

Moree Hospital’s emergency department has again operated without an onsite doctor.

It follows a period last year where the hospital also operated without a doctor at the facility.

The latest absence of a doctor started on February 3 and is expected to last until February 12.

Member for Northern Tablelands Brendan Moylan said throughout December and January, hospitals across the Northern Tablelands, including Inverell, were repeatedly forced to operate without a doctor on the ground in the emergency department.

Moree Plains Shire’s representative in state parliament, Mr Moylan said the failure to ensure a doctor is physically present is a staggering failure of the state government that puts lives at risk.

“This is a disgrace and it’s happening far too often,” Mr Moylan said.

“If this happened in Sydney for nine days, the Minister would be on every TV channel within the hour.

“When it happens in Moree or Inverell, the state government goes missing.”Emergency departments are designed to deal with heart attacks, trauma, strokes and serious injuries, not to be run remotely or by phone while patients wait and hope nothing goes wrong.

“Country people are not asking for special treatment, we are asking for equal treatment,” Mr Moylan said.

“Northern Tablelands families deserve the same standard of emergency care as families in the city.”

Mr Moylan has once again raised this disgrace in NSW Parliament and has called on the Minns Labor government to immediately ensure doctors are physically present in country emergency departments.

“Leaving emergency departments unstaffed is not ‘managing a workforce issue’; it’s abandoning country patients,” he said. “The government can find doctors for the city. They just seem to give up when it comes to regional NSW.

“The continued failure to staff regional emergency departments shows the state government has no serious plan for country health care.

“The government needs to act on the recommendations of the Select Committee on Remote, Rural and Regional Health which provided the government with several sensible suggestions on how to fix this problem.

“People in the Northern Tablelands deserve better and have every right to be angry.”

Mr Moylan gave a Notice of Motion in NSW Parliament on Wednesday about the Moree Hospital being left without a doctor in the emergency department.

“The regional health system is buckling. It is not keeping up with demand,” Mr Moylan told parliament.

“People choose not to go to hospital because they know there will not be a doctor there. I accept that the Minister is trying, but we need results.

“We cannot just keep expecting that people will be happy with the laptop on a trolley system, which is not good enough. People are upset. Someone is going to die as a result of this.

“I conclude by reiterating that a laptop on a trolley does not work. I have been in the emergency department when the staff try to fire up the laptop.

“They try to get a signal into Sydney and the connection is not good enough to generate a picture.

“We are given a laptop on a trolley as a substitute for a doctor and the laptop does not even work. We are fed up.

“Something has to change because it is not good enough. People in the bush deserve equal access to health care.”