McGinty's Fiona Stanley Hospital Fiasco

McGinty's Folly: In 2 years, a $642 m cost blowout and further 2 year's delay - more around the corner!

The Desert Rat’s research shows that in just 2 years the cost of Stage 1 of the Fiona Stanley Hospital has blown out from $420 m (591 beds) to $1.1billion (643 beds) - a blowout of 260%. Not only that, the completion date has blown out by 2 years – from 2010 to 2012. The cost blowout has occurred even though major areas of medicine such as obstetrics and gynaecology have been sneakily removed from Stage 1 without any announcement by the publicity shy McGinty.

The Desert Rat is aghast at Health Minister McGinty’s capacity to waste public funds. It’s a pity he didn’t spend it as if it were his own money, then maybe the tax burden on the battler could be eased a tad.

McGinty’s main reason for building the Fiona Stanley Hospital was to gain operating efficiencies and bring down recurrent spending! However, the Desert Rat can only ponder what may have become of McGinty if he ever had a business and had to work for himself.

Well, what’s the bet that the cost will reach $2 billion before McGinty can finally get any of his opposition within the ALP into Corrective Services welfare system and that there won’t be a bum on a bed until 2015!

The Desert Rat will trot out this little table on the Fiona Stanley costs fiasco each time we have a another cost blowout, a further delay or McGinty downgrades the announced hospital services, to save money. Why on earth would the staff at Royal Perth and Fremantle be worried about moving – it ain’t going to happen for a long, long time! They should be bitching about the money being burned on this Ministerial ego trip.

Year	Cost	Beds	Completion Date	Blowout
2009	$2 billion?		2015	$1600 m 4 years?
2007
2006 Dec	$1092 m	643	2012	$672m Delay 2 yrs
2005 Sept	$ 742 m	610	2011	$322m Delay 1 yr.
2005 Feb	$420	591	2010

What McGinty once described as a “world class”, “state of the art” hospital, he now admits he can’t deliver. Instead he said recently on the ABC:

"Would we get the best hospital in Australia? Probably not. That's why we are looking at all these other options (to cut costs). Costs will be contained at $1.1 billion.”

The Fiona Stanley Hospital (Stage 1) was originally announced to provide health services including:

• a 24-hour emergency department capable of dealing with major trauma;
• cardiothoracic services;
• cancer treatments and radiation therapy;
• renal transplantation and dialysis;
• obstetrics and gynaecology; (GONE)
• paediatrics;
• radiology services including CT and MRI scanning; and
• a clinical research centre.