June 2004

New era for expanded Williamstown Hospital

Williamstown Hospital services will be expanded and its elective surgery capacity increased with around 1,000 extra operations every year, Premier Steve Bracks has announced.

Mr Bracks, who was joined by Health Minister Bronwyn Pike, also announced $2 million in funding to relocate and improve the emergency department.

He said the new Interim Service Plan for the Williamstown Hospital confirmed the hospital’s future was secure.

‘The reconfiguration of services will ensure Williamstown retains its role as an important community hospital servicing the needs of the local population into the future,’ Mr Bracks said.

‘The interim plan will be further developed with Western Health to ensure the hospital’s sustainability and its capacity to respond to and meet the community’s needs.

‘Williamstown Hospital is important to the local community and, under the plan, will take on a greater role.’

Mr Bracks said the proposal would increase the capacity of the emergency department to manage community needs and increase the focus of Williamstown Hospital on older women’s health.

He said birthing services—put on hold at Williamstown late last year because of a shortage of anaesthetists—would be restored with a midwifery model.

He said the model would be linked into other major hospitals so mothers who developed complications during childbirth could quickly access obstetric care.

The plan also proposes to:

• Increase the focus at Williamstown as a health service for women, especially older women;

• Increase capacity of the emergency department to meet community needs;

• Tackle health service waiting lists through boosting elective surgery and throughput;

• Maintain existing aged care and community rehabilitation services;

• Expand midwife-led antenatal care services.

Ms Pike said the elective surgery expansion would take up under-utilised capacity at Williamstown Hospital.

The expansion would focus on patients with less complex conditions from the waiting lists, who would probably need two or three days in hospital for their recovery.

The $2 million Government funding boost would relocate the emergency department to the front of the hospital, which would improve access for ambulances and patients.

It is also envisaged it would incorporate GP-type services.

Ms Pike said the midwifery model—similar to a system that has been used in Britain for decades—had been proposed because of the inability to recruit anaesthetists to work after-hours at Williamstown Hospital to back up obstetricians.

The model involves the midwife caring for the woman during pregnancy, labour, birth and the postnatal period and will be further investigated over the next few months.

Ms Pike said on top of the additional $2 million for the emergency department, Williamstown Hospital would also receive a substantial budget boost next financial year as part of the $1.6 billion in additional hospital funding announced in the recent Budget.

She said Williamstown’s interim plan would be reviewed and updated if required when the Western Health strategic service plan, currently underway for hospital facilities across Melbourne’s west, is completed later this year.