Health officials urged to negotiate with GPs

Health authorities have been urged to come back to the negotiating table with Wee Waa’s doctors to be given VMO status at the hospital.

Wee Waa business owner and prominent local identity Kerry Watts queried Hunter New England Local Health District chief executive Tracey McCosker at Monday night’s hospital meeting in relation to offers being made to local general practitioners.

“The reality is on the fourth of August this year, I got an email from Hunter New England Health telling me that the offer that was made to the local GP back in March of this year was not negotiable,” Mr Watts told the meeting.

“Correct me if I’m wrong Ms McCosker, but it was agreed by Hunter New England Health that unless we have a doctor available on call, not necessarily on site, but available on call, it will be difficult to attract nursing staff to the Wee Waa Hospital. That was agreed.”

“They’ve said to me that they are not prepared to negotiate any further after what was proposed in March,” Mr Watts said.

“Yet in July, they told me that they were prepared … or I told them that I was prepared to go to any place that they wanted, at any time that they wanted, to try and restart negotiations.

“In my view, simply you have not engaged effectively with the local doctors.

“We have three of them here in town now, and there’s a fourth that is prepared to come here if they wish to. So maybe you could tell me how you are going to negotiate with the local doctors.”

Mr Watts’ statement and question were met with applause from the audience packed inside the Wee Waa Public School hall.

Responding to Mr Watts, Ms McCosker said they know a doctor is needed on site.

“We made the highest offer within that framework that we could make,” she told the meeting.

“It was the best offer we could make within that framework. That wasn’t accepted.

“I think it’s the right thing to do, to look at as many different models of care that we can that will get a doctor on site.

“And there are other models of care that can get a doctor on site, and that’s what we’re pursuing at the moment. And we’ve got some good irons in the fire, and we’re hoping that we will know something pretty soon.

“And when we do that, we’re hoping that we will manage to get a doctor on site because we want that as much as you want that because we know it’s important.”

The issue of getting local doctors as VMOs at the hospital was a recurrent theme throughout the public meeting. Local cotton grower Daniel Kahl again pushed further, querying a counter-offer as well as whether there was room in the budget to allow for negotiations.

“Change the policy setting and get on with it,” Mr Kahl told the meeting.

Health officials were also asked whether they had held discussions with Narrabri doctors in relation to assisting at Wee Waa Hospital.

Ms McCosker told the meeting Narrabri GPs didn’t have the capacity to offer services to Wee Waa Hospital.

When health officials were again pressed further about the VMO situation, a member of the audience told the visiting speakers to “just pay the bloody doctors and get them in there” which was met with agreement from the gathering.

Save Wee Waa Hospital group member Jono Phelps told the meeting the key to the hospital returning to full services is a VMO.

“The doctors are only 600 metres away from the hospital,” Mr Phelps said. “Tracey, you just don’t seem to get it.”

Mr Phelps also rebuked previous concerns about accommodation. “You get a VMO … the accommodation will be there.”

Fellow group member Kate Kahl told the meeting four nurses have said they will come back to Wee Waa if there is a VMO.