It doesn’t need more cuts, it needs a funding injection and more high quality doctors and nurses coursing through its veins. It is time to dispose of the politics, flush out the blame game and fix the system.

For the past decade, the LGH has struggled to attract specialist staff to the region in a full-time capacity. Granted, it's an issue that plagues many regional centres, but more certainly needs to be done.

In 2007, then director of medicine Professor Rob Fassett pleaded for the urgent appointment of two vascular surgeons after both consultants moved.  The Band-aid back then: three Southern surgeons were rostered on to work in Launceston instead.  In 2016, it was gastroenterologists the hospital was looking for after its specialist retired and it was also at risk of losing its teaching accreditation over the lack of radiologists.  Back at ground zero, the emergency department suffered a mass exodus with eight out of 11 specialists quitting, retiring or reducing their hours.

LGH Medical Staff Association chairman Scott Parkes said consultants in the department were struggling with an unsustainable workload and lack of resources.

In October last year, the Tasmanian Health Service collaborated with Wavelength International to produce a high-end video to try to entice specialists to work at the LGH. Let’s hope that as taxpayers, our money was well spent and recruitment was successful. Earlier this year, the LGH was hit by an unenviable training accreditation downgrade. The hospital is still on the hunt for an endocrinologist and now more recently neurosurgeon Dr Kurien Koshy has retired, citing a need for increased services.

This month it was reported in Budget Estimates that the bill for locum doctors had increased from $3.4 million to $6.6 million over the past year.  The Hodgman government, in its pre-election budget, earmarked $7 billion over four years, with $144.4 million for more hospital beds and staff. Of that Ward 4D will increase to 19 beds, receiving $35.8 million and the John L Grove Rehabilitation Centre will receive $20m.

It is time the political parties stopped playing ping-pong and blaming the state of our health system on who was in power at the time. People don’t care if it was the Labor-Greens or the Liberal Party, they just want the system fixed.