June 2002

New head for eye and ear hospital

Graeme Houghton has been appointed Chief Executive Officer of The Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital.

Originally from Melbourne, Mr Houghton has spent the past five years in Adelaide as CEO of the Repatriation General Hospital Daw Park, a 250-bed acute medical, surgical and psychiatric teaching hospital affiliated with Flinders University.

Mr Houghton’s career spans 25 years of working in specialist training and teaching public hospitals as well as in the private health sector.

Between 1985 and 1995, Mr Houghton was CEO of the Austin Hospital and before that worked six years at Fairfield Hospital, the last four as CEO.

Mr Houghton said is he is eager about leading a new chapter in the long history of The Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital, which was established in 1863.

The hospital is Australia’s only specialist hospital in eye, ear, nose and throat medicine.

It performs half the State’s public general eye surgery and up to 90 per cent of special eye surgery, as well as all the cochlear implants in Victoria.

Last year, the hospital provided 223,000 treatments, of which more than 178,000 were delivered in its outpatient clinics and more than 44,000 in its emergency department.

The hospital also admitted more than 12,000 patients.