Launceston in need of new private hospital to help with demand

Australian Medical Association board member Michael Lumsden-Steel has said the LGH will continue to operate over its capacity without the co-located hospital, to be operated by Calvary Health Care.

"They need to get on and urgently build the new co-located private hospital and that needs to start tomorrow," he said.

READ MORE: Youth in court over alleged Kings Meadows assaults

"To be frank, every day that we don't have additional bed capacity in Launceston means that there's an increased risk of an adverse event. Full stop."

The proposed development has been some time coming.

Calvary in 2021 signed an agreement with the state government to build a $120 million co-located hospital to replace its existing Calvary St Luke's and Calvary St Vincent's hospitals

READ MORE: Design Tasmania thanks departing CEO, looks forward to next stage of growth

Former health minister Jeremy Rockliff in February announced the state government and Calvary had agreed to establish the co-located hospital on the corner of Howick and Charles Street.

He said the original Frankland Street site will become the home for the new mental health precinct, to be built as part of the LGH precinct masterplan.

The Health Department last month lodged a development application to demolish four buildings on the Howick Street site, including the Anne O'Byrne Centre building.

Calvary lodged a development application to build the hospital on that site.

The hospital is to include 128 inpatient beds, 40 day patient beds and 10 operating theatres.

Dr Lumsden-Steel said the co-located hospital would allow patients who came through the public emergency department to be diverted to a private hospital bed.

"Launceston does not have enough bed capacity," he said.

READ MORE: Claim that financial risks are put before mental impairments

"The Calvary hospitals in Launceston do not have meaningful beds that are the appropriate location and acuity to put public patients into.

"The Launceston General Hospital needs to have a surge capacity for acute presentations.

"When you run the hospital continually at 95 to 105 per cent capacity, you actually don't have any surge capacity.

"We've come into winter around the state with our hospitals already running at 100 per cent capacity before we get 20 to 30-per-cent bed load surge that we need for acute medical admissions."

Dr Lumsden-Steel said a strategic relationship with Calvary for the purchase of private beds would allow the private hospital to recruit the staff it needed based on a predictable and known public workload.

"And if you've got a good co-location model, it can actually be also used as an incentive to attract and retain specialists to regional centres whereby they can do a mixture of public and private work," he said.

Dr Lumsden-Steel said Launceston's emergency department was incredibly overwhelmed as it was the only place emergency presentations could go, unlike Hobart where there were private emergency departments.

"It's almost like a warzone in the emergency department where it's continually full," he said.

"Patients are still in chairs, trolleys and corridors. They're not in proper beds, they're not in proper bays,"

"Emergency department staff are highly trained resource that unfortunately, time and time again, we're seeing are unable to provide the care that they should be providing because we can't get patients into the department in a timely manner.

"We've got the situation where the Tasmanian Government has had to employ more paramedics to provide care for those patients that have been ramped in the hospitals than to actually be able to respond because they're tied up at the hospital.

"There's enough signals repeatedly coming out of Launceston General Hospital that says that the system is just underfunded, it's overwhelmed, though staff continue to do an amazing job."

Health Minister Guy Barnett over the weekend said almost 40 per cent of all presentations to Tasmanian emergency departments in June were not urgent and may have been appropriate for treatment in an alternative health care setting.

He said this included virtual care and advice, mental health support, pharmacies, general practices and the state's new Medicate urgent care clinics.

By utilising alternatives to the emergency department, where appropriate, Tasmanians can receive the right care for their needs, while also helping to reduce pressure on our hospitals, Mr Barnett said.

An urgent care clinic operates at the Launceston Medical Centre on Wellington Street from 2pm to 8pm, seven days a week.

If people are unsure about what pathway to take, they can call Healthdirect on 1800 022 222 to speak to a registered nurse 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: