Geelong Private staff offered jobs

STAFF left without jobs following the impending closure of Geelong Private Hospital have been thrown a lifeline, with 117 positions to be made available at Barwon Health and the site to potentially become a new hospital.

On Friday last week, Minister for Health Jill Hennessy announced the positions for Geelong Private Hospital workers would include nursing, allied health, administration and patient services assistant positions.

The next day, Premier Daniel Andrews announced the state government would immediately invest $10 million to identify options for converting the hospital on Ryrie Street into a women’s and children’s hospital.

The study will look at options to deliver additional maternity and paediatric services for Geelong families, as well as more inpatient beds, delivery rooms, operating theatres and clinics.

“We’re planning for the establishment of a world-class women’s and children’s hospital that will give Geelong families the full suite of services they need, closer to home,” Mr Andrews said.

Additional positions will also be made available at Mercy Health and Western Health, who will work with HealthScope to match nurses and other staff members with vacancies at their sites.

An expression of interest process was to begin this week.

Affected workers will still receive their entitlements from HealthScope, including redundancy payments.

Nurses and other health care workers support Victorians at the toughest of times, and we’ll support them during this challenging period,” Ms Hennessy said.

“These staff are supremely qualified and valuable professionals and they’d be a tremendous asset to Barwon Health.”