Meander Valley health funding slashed
January 2017 | Elizabeth Douglass
MEANDER VALLEY community health services have lost three full-time local health professionals, a social worker, a youth health and development worker, and a mental health worker under the new federal government- funded scheme administered by Primary Health Tasmania (PHT).
Meander Valley, Kentish, Tasman and Southern Midlands communities have all lost funding for their current preventative health services beyond December 2016.
Local communities, their council representatives and local federal opposition members are all outraged at the services that will be lost.
A press release from PHT on 20th December 2016 can be found on their website (www.primaryhealthtas.com.au).
It lists the five successful tenders from a field of 40 applicants — The Royal Flying Doctors Service, Diabetes Tasmania, Rural Health Tasmania, Huon Regional Care and Corumbene Care.
The release shows the complete list of local government areas serviced by the new providers and the chronic conditions they will target. Most services commence in January.
Cuts to existing community health services are not listed.
No existing community health care providers were successful in tendering.
Diabetes Tasmania, a charity already active throughout Tasmania, is the only service provider listed for the Meander Valley, despite Westbury Health and Westbury Community Health Centre both submitting tenders.
The new services address the dire need for chronic ill-health management in rural Tasmania and will ‘target conditions identified by local communities as priorities’ (PHT press release, December 2016).
Meander Valley Mayor, Craig Perkins, in a 21st December media statement, points out that “discussions concerning the ‘service gaps’ will only be with communities that PHT determine are high in chronic need.”
As only Kentish and Glamorgan/Spring Bay are described thus in the PHT press release, it follows that Meander Valley will not have any service gaps addressed.
Many axed programs focused on preventative strategies for chronic illnesses, also tackling issues such as poor mental health and social isolation.
Chronic conditions such as arthritis, cancer, dementia, diabetes, heart disease and lung disease are now targeted, with the consequent shift away from youthoriented issues.
Dinah Fitzgerald of Westbury Health has commented that the new system can be also construed as a move away from preventative health, because results are more difficult to quantify.
For example, Meander Valley/West Tamar had the lowest age-standardised rate of heart disease mortality in the state from 2009–2012 (Heart Foundation Australian heart disease statistics 2015, published 2016). Current community preventative health services may have directly contributed to this, but statistical information is unavailable.
As reported by The Mercury earlier in December, Health Minister Michael Ferguson believes the PHT tender process short-changed regional communities, and he called on the Federal Health Minister Susan Ley to intervene.
Mayor Craig Perkins also expressed his disappointment: “…it is difficult to understand how good health outcomes can be achieved from this approach.”
Federal Labor member for Lyons, Brian Mitchell, criticises the federal government’s ‘top-down approach’ and backs suggestions from Meander Valley and Kentish communities that existing services be retained for at least 6 months, so that old and new services can be compared to identify gaps, duplications and efficacy of service.
Meander Valley Councillor Bob Richardson has commented that the loss of federal government funding to aged care services, may have affected the decisions to redirect local health funding.
He also suggests that ‘service gaps’ could be best filled by existing local community health organisations re-tendering, rather than by PHT offering the new, as yet-unproven, service providers the opportunity to extend.
BACKGROUND June 2015 – Primary Health Tasmania is the new state-wide organisation for ‘primary care-focused health, supporting general practice and other community-based providers to deliver the best possible care for Tasmanians’ (PHT website, June 2015).
April 2016 – Tasmania received $54 million as a three-year funding boost to health from the federal government.
June 2016 – Primary Health Tasmania begins consultation with rural communities and local community health groups.
June 2016 – The federal government announces cuts to aged care funding by $1.2 billion over four years in the 2016–17 budget.
September 2016 – PHT calls for tenders for services to ‘improve the health of people living with chronic conditions in rural areas’.
December 2016 – PHT announces the organisations that will deliver rural health services across 21 local government areas in Tasmania from January 2017.
