Box Hill Hospital – promised “super hospital” becomes just “half a hospital”

Mr CLARK (Box Hill) — I raise with the Minister for Health the government’s recently announced proposal to undertake a scaled back, hybrid, part new, part refurbishment project at Box Hill Hospital, and I ask the minister to make public the business case, plans, time lines, costings and funding option assessments for the project.

Under Labor, Box Hill Hospital has some of the worst waiting lists and waiting times of any hospital in Melbourne. In 2008-09 it failed seven of nine government benchmarks. The waiting list for elective surgery has gone from 1166 patients in December 1999 to 2791 patients in June 2009.

Before the 2006 election eastern suburb residents were promised a new ‘super hospital’, to quote the Sunday Herald Sun of 28 May 2006, which reported in a story obviously based on an exclusive government briefing:

“The Bracks government will spend $650 million on a new hospital in Box Hill to service 700 000 Melburnians in the east.”

On 16 May 2008 the Minister for Gaming and Minister for Consumer Affairs, the member for Mitcham, was reported as saying:

“… he was ‘very confident’ the state government would deliver the $850 million-plus needed to massively upgrade the ageing hospital —
and that the funds would be delivered ‘within 12 months’. “

On 16 September this year, the Whitehorse Leader reported:

“Premier John Brumby revealed exclusively to the Leader that the state would foot the entire bill for the hospital’s rebuild, tipped to cost $1 billion.
The Bracks and Brumby governments have spent more than seven years planning and replanning the rebuilding of the Box Hill Hospital. Eastern Health management, with the support and encouragement of the government, has spent years of work and millions of dollars drawing up detailed plans and business cases for a completely new rebuilt Box Hill Hospital. “

These plans went to the government before the 2006 election. They were what the government was talking about in its 2006 election promise, and they were updated in a business case submitted by Eastern Health to the government in December 2007.

Now the Brumby government has walked away from seven years of work, millions of dollars spent on planning and a clear election promise. On Wednesday it announced a $407.5 million mishmash proposal, which the government had put together internally without consultation with the hospital community. A large part of the proposal is just a short-term attempt to patch up an outdated and inadequate facility.

As Eastern Health board member and Whitehorse City Council councillor, Robert Chong, rightly said in the Whitehorse Leader of 30 April 2008:

“Box Hill is a rabbit warren … It doesn’t matter how you try to organise it, as it stands it just can’t cope. “

However, Wednesday’s announcement shows the Brumby government has decided to pour millions of dollars down this rabbit warren when the money should have been put towards the new hospital that residents were promised.

Eastern suburbs residents have been badly short-changed. The new facilities will bring some improvements, but they are far short of what was promised and what is needed. To make matters worse, by going for a patch-up job on the existing hospital, the government has added years to the project, which is not due to be completed until 2015. It may well make waiting lists worse rather than better over the next six years due to operating theatres being unavailable while being refurbished.

That is why the minister must make public all documentation relating to the proposal, so the public can see exactly how the Brumby government came to decide on this hybrid model, how much money is going to be wasted on short-term patch ups, how much it will add to delays and waiting lists, and how much residents will now not receive in comparison to the fully planned new hospital they were promised.