Major health shake-up for Barwon South West

THE health services operating in the Barwon South West region will be brought together to form a local health service network, the Victorian government announced last week.

The move, recommended by an independent committee after a review of the design of Victoria’s system of public health services, aims to alleviate the present strain on the state’s healthcare system, reduce the unnecessary duplication of services, improve patient care and enable collaboration and staffing support between services.

Barwon South West spans from Geelong to Glenelg on the South Australian border and is one of 11 local health service networks to be established across the state under the Victorian government’s new health services plan.

“Networks will address issues which existing health services, working independently or in loose partnership arrangements, lack the scale, capability and authority to deliver effectively on their own,” the independent committee stated in their report.

These connections will better allow services to navigate periods of high demand and streamline communication with Ambulance Victoria to improve the distribution of ambulances and the handover of patients arriving by ambulance.

In each geographically defined network, a relationship will be formed between a major tertiary, women’s and children’s hospital and the other services operating in the area.

Locally, the health services plan proposes to bring together Barwon Health with these healthcare services:

• Casterton Memorial Hospital
• Cola Area Health
• Great Ocean Road Health
• Hesse Rural Health Service
• Heywood Rural Health
• Moyne Health Services
• Portland District Health
• South West Healthcare
• Terang and Mortlake Health Service
• Timboon and District Healthcare Service, and
• Western District Health Service.

Barwon Health chief executive Frances Diver said the health care provider had well established partnerships with rural health services in the Barwon South West region.

“The recommendation to create Local Health Networks will build on those partnerships.

“We are carefully working through the Health Services Plan recommendations, and we are expecting more information from the Department of Health in the coming weeks and months about how the plan will be implemented.”

The network will serve an estimated population of 490,000 people, the largest of any other proposed network.

Information is still to be provided on how these networks will be established and what their implementation will mean for the services now operating across the region.