Warley Hospital: "Don't bring sick people here," ambulance officers were told. Mal McCann took just 10 minutes to persuade a roomful of sceptical Phillip Islanders that the island didn’t need a hospital.
By Catherine Watson
IN APRIL, in the midst of general public outrage over the state government’s refusal to provide a hospital on Phillip Island, Mal McCann, the team manager for ambulance services in Cowes, wrote a very short letter to the Phillip Island Advertiser pointing out some facts.
Mr McCann wrote that he had analysed the data for ambulance callouts on the island between January 1 and March 31. Of about 150 callouts between 10pm and 9am, fewer than 25 – about two a week – could have been treated by a doctor or small hospital. The rest were emergencies requiring an invasive action such as a cannula or the patient needed to be transferred to hospital for ongoing assessment.
The common belief that there was a gaping hole in primary care services on the island was misguided, he wrote.
He had hoped the facts might throw light on the subject. In fact, the letter was buried and it was not followed up by the Advertiser, which was running with a campaign for a hospital on the island.
Speaking to the Post six weeks later, Mr McCann is disappointed at the lack of response but resolute. He says he’s on a mission to educate the public, one person at a time if necessary.
“The fear and paranoia is born out of ignorance. We fear what we don’t understand.”
What Phillip Island actually needs, he says, is not a hospital but hospital services. And the best way of getting those is to support a sub-regional hospital at Wonthaggi.
At last Monday’s Phillip Island community forum, he got a chance to try his skills of persuasion on a roomful of people.
“Who thinks we need a hospital on the island?” he asked, and more than half raised their hands.
It took him just 10 minutes to convince them that they were wrong.
In that time, Mr McCann, an ambulance officer for 33 years, 19 of them on Phillip Island, calmly, methodically – and even humorously – demolished many myths and misapprehensions about the island’s health situation.
He says we need to stop being parochial and that means looking at south-west Gippsland as a health region.
“We have very great transfer rate out of Wonthaggi – they’re a brilliant team of people in a hospital that can’t cope. If we could upgrade to a sub-regional hospital, that would make all the difference.
“It breaks your heart when you pick up a patient from the island to take them to Melbourne and Mum says ‘How can I get there?’ It’s 140 kilometres away.”
“We need dialysis, chemo and other services that we can do locally and send Mum or Dad home. The energy should be directed to getting a good sub-regional hospital in Wonthaggi for the person who is moderately sick.”
Such a hospital could serve the whole of south-west Gippsland, with the hospitals at Korumburra and Leongatha feeding into it, and a hub of services going out to areas like Phillip Island.
“We need young physicians to move into town and get enough throughput to stay for 20 years with their families and become part of the community. With a sub-regional hospital you can start to offer the services.”
It’s unusual to find a public servant prepared to speak publicly, but Mr McCann says he seeks “the greater good for the greater number”. “I want to see our families able to look after their mum or dad or sick kid in a hospital nearby.”
Wonthaggi’s Dr Nola Maxfield, who is chairwoman of Gippsland Medicare Local, says attaining sub-regional status would enable Wonthaggi to obtain funding for a wider range of services.
“A high dependency unit is needed in order to operate on slightly more complex patients and to admit people with more complex problems.
“Wonthaggi already has something the others in its current class do not, which is a funded emergency department. But there needs to be a chemotherapy service provided in the Bass Coast Shire. More extensive rehabilitation services are needed and a wider range of surgery to be provided.”
She says there are good staff at the hospital, many of whom live on Phillip Island, but many islanders go to other places to have operations, maternity and other services that could be provided at Wonthaggi.
“The people of Phillip Island need to start embracing it as their health service, and hopefully this will occur when the hospital and the community health merge into Bass Coast Health from July 1.”
The myths,
according to Mal McCann
1. Phillip Islanders were robbed of their hospital when Warley Hospital closed in 2008.
“This is a case of the older I get, the better I was. It was not a public hospital. There was only a nurse on duty at night. Three years before Warley Hospital closed, they requested a meeting with the ambulance to say ‘Don’t bring sick people here – we can’t treat them’. If someone turned up sick, the first thing they would do was to call Triple-0. We used to have the highest helicopter use in the state when Warley Hospital was operating. We were averaging more than seven helicopters a week out of Cowes.”
2. The island needs a hospital with emergency services.
“When I started in the job we had oxygen and analgesics. Now we have advanced life support personnel available. If someone’s having a heart attack, ambulance paramedics treat them at the scene. That’s what your ambulance services do now. We make the clinical decisions: either a helicopter, turn left at Anderson towards the city or right towards Wonthaggi Hospital.”
3. Once the doctors surgery closes at 10pm there are no medical services available on the island.
“The perception is that there is this gaping hole in primary care. It’s not true. We have 20 ambulance officers on the island providing 24-hour care. They all have a minimum of advanced life support qualifications. We have some of the best response times in Victoria – we reach 90 per cent of emergencies in under 15 minutes. The average is 10 minutes.”
4. If there’s a traffic jam on the island, people will die.
“I’ve been here 20 years and we’ve never had a situation where we couldn’t get a person to hospital. We get to the scene – that’s our job – and we get them out.”
5. Much smaller places – such as Kerang and Boort – have hospitals.
“People keep saying look at all those hospitals in the country. Just because they’ve got a shed with a hospital sign doesn’t mean diddly squat. Half of them don’t even have doctors.”
COMMENTS
June 11, 2014
The statement in your article that the Phillip Island Advertiser is running a campaign for a hospital in Cowes is misleading, and incorrect.
So too your assertion that a “very short” letter pointing out some facts, written by Mal McCann, Cowes Ambulance team manager, was “buried” in the Advertiser.
The Advertiser supports the establishment of 24/7 health services in Cowes. That is, the provision of health care after the doctor’s surgery has closed. Not every medical emergency requires an ambulance and the latest proposal, to this end, for employment of an after hours nurse practitioner, appears to have wide support, including from Mr McCann.
The 548 word letter you refer to can hardly be described as “very short” and was published on the letters page (April 24, 2014) precisely as Mr McCann intended it to be.
Had he suggested further editorial, or more focus on his viewpoint, this would have been cheerfully provided.
Your inference that Mr McCann’s letter was deliberately “buried” presumably in order to suppress a view not in accord with that of the Phillip Island Advertiser, is a most unfair one.
Anne Oswin, Phillip Island and San Remo Advertiser
IN APRIL, in the midst of general public outrage over the state government’s refusal to provide a hospital on Phillip Island, Mal McCann, the team manager for ambulance services in Cowes, wrote a very short letter to the Phillip Island Advertiser pointing out some facts.
Mr McCann wrote that he had analysed the data for ambulance callouts on the island between January 1 and March 31. Of about 150 callouts between 10pm and 9am, fewer than 25 – about two a week – could have been treated by a doctor or small hospital. The rest were emergencies requiring an invasive action such as a cannula or the patient needed to be transferred to hospital for ongoing assessment.
The common belief that there was a gaping hole in primary care services on the island was misguided, he wrote.
He had hoped the facts might throw light on the subject. In fact, the letter was buried and it was not followed up by the Advertiser, which was running with a campaign for a hospital on the island.
Speaking to the Post six weeks later, Mr McCann is disappointed at the lack of response but resolute. He says he’s on a mission to educate the public, one person at a time if necessary.
“The fear and paranoia is born out of ignorance. We fear what we don’t understand.”
What Phillip Island actually needs, he says, is not a hospital but hospital services. And the best way of getting those is to support a sub-regional hospital at Wonthaggi.
At last Monday’s Phillip Island community forum, he got a chance to try his skills of persuasion on a roomful of people.
“Who thinks we need a hospital on the island?” he asked, and more than half raised their hands.
It took him just 10 minutes to convince them that they were wrong.
In that time, Mr McCann, an ambulance officer for 33 years, 19 of them on Phillip Island, calmly, methodically – and even humorously – demolished many myths and misapprehensions about the island’s health situation.
He says we need to stop being parochial and that means looking at south-west Gippsland as a health region.
“We have very great transfer rate out of Wonthaggi – they’re a brilliant team of people in a hospital that can’t cope. If we could upgrade to a sub-regional hospital, that would make all the difference.
“It breaks your heart when you pick up a patient from the island to take them to Melbourne and Mum says ‘How can I get there?’ It’s 140 kilometres away.”
“We need dialysis, chemo and other services that we can do locally and send Mum or Dad home. The energy should be directed to getting a good sub-regional hospital in Wonthaggi for the person who is moderately sick.”
Such a hospital could serve the whole of south-west Gippsland, with the hospitals at Korumburra and Leongatha feeding into it, and a hub of services going out to areas like Phillip Island.
“We need young physicians to move into town and get enough throughput to stay for 20 years with their families and become part of the community. With a sub-regional hospital you can start to offer the services.”
It’s unusual to find a public servant prepared to speak publicly, but Mr McCann says he seeks “the greater good for the greater number”. “I want to see our families able to look after their mum or dad or sick kid in a hospital nearby.”
Wonthaggi’s Dr Nola Maxfield, who is chairwoman of Gippsland Medicare Local, says attaining sub-regional status would enable Wonthaggi to obtain funding for a wider range of services.
“A high dependency unit is needed in order to operate on slightly more complex patients and to admit people with more complex problems.
“Wonthaggi already has something the others in its current class do not, which is a funded emergency department. But there needs to be a chemotherapy service provided in the Bass Coast Shire. More extensive rehabilitation services are needed and a wider range of surgery to be provided.”
She says there are good staff at the hospital, many of whom live on Phillip Island, but many islanders go to other places to have operations, maternity and other services that could be provided at Wonthaggi.
“The people of Phillip Island need to start embracing it as their health service, and hopefully this will occur when the hospital and the community health merge into Bass Coast Health from July 1.”
The myths,
according to Mal McCann
1. Phillip Islanders were robbed of their hospital when Warley Hospital closed in 2008.
“This is a case of the older I get, the better I was. It was not a public hospital. There was only a nurse on duty at night. Three years before Warley Hospital closed, they requested a meeting with the ambulance to say ‘Don’t bring sick people here – we can’t treat them’. If someone turned up sick, the first thing they would do was to call Triple-0. We used to have the highest helicopter use in the state when Warley Hospital was operating. We were averaging more than seven helicopters a week out of Cowes.”
2. The island needs a hospital with emergency services.
“When I started in the job we had oxygen and analgesics. Now we have advanced life support personnel available. If someone’s having a heart attack, ambulance paramedics treat them at the scene. That’s what your ambulance services do now. We make the clinical decisions: either a helicopter, turn left at Anderson towards the city or right towards Wonthaggi Hospital.”
3. Once the doctors surgery closes at 10pm there are no medical services available on the island.
“The perception is that there is this gaping hole in primary care. It’s not true. We have 20 ambulance officers on the island providing 24-hour care. They all have a minimum of advanced life support qualifications. We have some of the best response times in Victoria – we reach 90 per cent of emergencies in under 15 minutes. The average is 10 minutes.”
4. If there’s a traffic jam on the island, people will die.
“I’ve been here 20 years and we’ve never had a situation where we couldn’t get a person to hospital. We get to the scene – that’s our job – and we get them out.”
5. Much smaller places – such as Kerang and Boort – have hospitals.
“People keep saying look at all those hospitals in the country. Just because they’ve got a shed with a hospital sign doesn’t mean diddly squat. Half of them don’t even have doctors.”
COMMENTS
June 11, 2014
The statement in your article that the Phillip Island Advertiser is running a campaign for a hospital in Cowes is misleading, and incorrect.
So too your assertion that a “very short” letter pointing out some facts, written by Mal McCann, Cowes Ambulance team manager, was “buried” in the Advertiser.
The Advertiser supports the establishment of 24/7 health services in Cowes. That is, the provision of health care after the doctor’s surgery has closed. Not every medical emergency requires an ambulance and the latest proposal, to this end, for employment of an after hours nurse practitioner, appears to have wide support, including from Mr McCann.
The 548 word letter you refer to can hardly be described as “very short” and was published on the letters page (April 24, 2014) precisely as Mr McCann intended it to be.
Had he suggested further editorial, or more focus on his viewpoint, this would have been cheerfully provided.
Your inference that Mr McCann’s letter was deliberately “buried” presumably in order to suppress a view not in accord with that of the Phillip Island Advertiser, is a most unfair one.
Anne Oswin, Phillip Island and San Remo Advertiser