LGH at critical capacity, Liberals blame others while cutting $700 million from health

 Tasmania’s healthcare system is in crisis, and The LGH Emergency Department is again operating at breaking point, yesterday urging non-emergency patients to seek alternate care. 

The ANMF reports the entire hospital is full, and has been operating at critical capacity for more than four weeks. 

This comes a week after the LGH ED reached critical capacity, treating patients in the waiting room and on trolleys in hallways, and the NW Regional Hospital closing its ICU due to insufficient medical staffing. 

Nurses are sounding the alarm as frightening reports of patients being moved to overstretched wards and units being left with doorbells to alert staff of needing assistance. 

Minister Archer's platitudes of ‘increased demand’ does little to quell the concerns of healthcare professionals and patients now left to carry the burden of a crumbling system, with concerns they can no longer meet the needs of patients in a safe and appropriate way, or reliably receive the level of care they need. 

Now, instead of fixing it, Premier Rockliff has put Eric Abetz in charge of cutting $700 million from a health system at breaking point and pretend there will be no consequences. 

They are choosing to ignore patients. They are choosing to ignore frontline staff, the AMA, ANMF, CPSU and HACSU. And they are choosing to make a health system in crisis do more with less.

Minister Archer needs to stop blaming others and start taking some responsibility. The Liberals were handed hundreds of millions in Commonwealth health funding for Tasmania’s hospitals, only to pocket the profit and use it to mop up 13 years of Liberal waste. 

Every dollar cut from healthcare has a human cost. And after 13 years of the Liberals Tasmanians are being asked to pay the ultimate price.