McGinty's Obstetrics Mess Pt 2

The Court's Jester - now Health's Jester

The Desert Rat is aware that Jim McGinty was warned when he closed Woodside Maternity Hospital that the birth rate was increasing significantly. Woodside Hospital was the the public maternity hospital for women in the Fremantle and surrounding suburbs.

McGinty and Fong believed the figure given to them by their NSW consultants which have now been shown to grossly underestimate the increase in birth rate.

The West Australian recently reported McGinty conceding the birth rate had "unexpectedly " increased by 20%. The fool was warned, but was too arrogant to listen.

McGinty closed the 40 bed Woodside Maternity Hospital in East Fremantle (23 beds were funded) and tried to cram the women into a 10 bed ward at Kaleeya Hospital nearby. McGinty increased the beds to 13 after the stupidity was pointed out. Thirteen was chosen because that was the average number of beds needed, at the birth rate in 2005 at Woodside Hospital.

What the self-appointed Emperor of WA didn't understand is that maternity cases vary widely each day. Sometimes days only 4 or 5 beds were required at Woodside and two days later 24 beds can be required! It can be a feast or a famine.

What now happens at Kaleeya Hospital, and was predicted (and denied by McGinty) is that the women overflow in to surgical ward where all sorts of dangerous bugs exist. Some babies and mothers have contracted infections in the surgical ward, but this has been suppressed or hushed up - because it was predicted. Women get very upset being moved in and out of the surgical ward while the staff juggle beds.

The move to Kaleeya was to be for 5 years. The Kaleeya ward was converted to maternity for $2 million and savings were claimed. When asked in Parliament if he had factored in the cost of $800 000 to reconvert the birthing suite and other facilities back to a normal ward after 5 years, McGinty replied he had never heard such a stupid question. Really? If Kaleeya Hospital was run by Ramsey Health Care or any other private operator, they would have to do the calculation!

McGinty said the move to Kaleeya was temporary and the maternity ward would close in five years, moving to the the Obstetrics and Gynaecology facility planned to open as part of Stage 1 of Fiona Stanley Hospital in 2010. That facility was sneakily deferred to Stage 2 and the Fiona Stanley facility now won't open until 2018 at the earliest! Ten years late. A chronic shortage of beds and a broken commitment to the women of the southern suburbs.

The Reid Report rather stupidly recommended any maternity facility with less than 1000 births a years should close as they were too small!! Woodside had 850 births a year. Women like smaller facilities for childbirth. McGinty used that recommendation to close Woodside but moved them into a smaller facility! The move was designed to help fill the over-priced lemon that McGinty bought before the 2004 election on the pretext of getting rid of the elective surgery backlist. It was half empty and an embarrassment to McGinty, and so Woodside was sacrificed to conceal the failure of Kaleeya (with 5 operating theatres) to perform. McGinty closed the Woodside Hospital which could have been expanded to 40 beds and shoe-horned it into a smaller cramped facility, against the Reid recommendation - a 13 bed ward at Kaleeya.

Now McGinty has announced he will keep Osborne Park Hospital's maternity facility open - after announcing its closure. Has this clown lost the plans or does he make it up as he goes?

If you thought Jim Minister McGinty had much of an idea about how to run the health system, you should be seriously wondering by now. He has been able to look good because he has appropriated most of the State budget for his own ministries which have been awash with funds. This would normally be good but he has wasted probably half the health budget.

Fiona Stanley Hospital was to be built for $451 million in 2005, when announced by Jester McGinty. By late 2007 the cost was $1760 million - a 400% blowout in cost in three years, increasing by $2 million a day!

Not a shovel of dirt has been turned and Fiona Stanley Hospital was originally due to be opened in two years (2010). Worthy of a bit of doggerel the Desert Rat thinks!

Spreading the Wasting Infection

Architects and Consultants of the Utmost Fame
Were called to Fiona Stanley; but when they came
They genuflected to McGinty, as they took their Fees,
'There is no Cure for your Disease.'

Is it no wonder the Desert Rat now has little respect for this incompetent political despot.