The editor,

Hereby we would like to express our grave concern regarding South Australia’s Country Health Care Plan.

To centralise health care services is disadvantaging rural and remote communities, which are already greatly disadvantaged.

It will take much longer to access medical care, which is bound to cost lives.

It will reduce the accessibility and affordability to health care for country people, thereby increasing their already higher mortality and morbidity rates.

Centralising health care services will also put extra pressure on and increase the waiting lists, which are already backlogged due to the large number of patients on the waiting lists.

Wasn’t Labor’s promise to reduce the waiting lists and look after all Australians, not only the metropolitan Australians?

Family ties are very strong in rural and remote areas, but it will be almost impossible for elderly people and families with children to stay in the country, when there are such limited health care services available.

Reducing clinical services in the country will put extra pressure on the already overstretched mental health care system, nursing and health care facilities in metropolitan SA.

To allow country hospitals/GP health centres to only admit patients for a maximum of three days, after which they will need to be transferred by ambulance or Royal Flying Doctor Service to a regional hospital far away from their family and friends, is extremely inefficient and costly, besides being detrimental to their social and psychological health.

Many country GPs are extremely experienced and highly skilled medical officers, who will liaise with specialists in regional and metropolitan hospitals as needed.

Apart from the fact, that the rural and remote communities will be greatly disadvantaged and people will need to travel much further to access health care, the health care providers will also find it less attractive and interesting to work in a health care facility with very limited clinical services.

It is usually the variety of work that will attract nurses and medical officers to rural and remote areas, so they can increase their skills in different areas.

There already is an escalating shortage of nurses and doctors in rural and remote areas and this new plan will only worsen the situation.

Centralising health care services has been implemented in for example the Netherlands, with, in our experience, disastrous effects.

Dutch people have to go abroad to be able to access medical services, such as visiting a specialist or having surgery, due to the enormous waiting lists.

The costs for health care in the Netherlands has increased enormously.

The Medicare Levy has since doubled, while services covered by Medicare have dramatically decreased, which subsequently has deteriorated the accessibility, affordability, level and quality of care provided.

The large hospitals provide depersonalised care due to the high work pressure and many nurses and doctors are leaving the profession or the country because of this situation, stretching the limited resources even more.

Port Augusta is a newly built, more centrally located hospital with a higher daily bed occupancy rate and better specialist and emergency services (with RFDS base) than Whyalla, but has been overlooked becoming a regional hospital and will lose specialist services, while it will be a centre of excellence in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health.

Would it not have been more efficient and cost-effective to make Port Augusta the regional hospital, instead of having two of SA’s four regional hospitals so close together, both on the Eyre Peninsula?

The very questionable cost-cutting of this not-well-thought-through plan will only decrease the quality of healthcare in whole South Australia, thus amounting to the costs and waiting lists.

We sincerely hope and pray that the ministers will not be too proud to reconsider this plan.

Richard and Leah Khoe

Quorn