By XAVIER SMERDON AND NATALIE GALLENTI
IF YOU live in the booming outer suburbs and are thinking of having a baby, you stand to wait much longer and pay thousands of dollars more than people living closer to the city, a new report has found.
The report by the Victorian Auditor-General entitled Maternity Services: Capacity, tabled in Parliament last week, found that new and growing suburbs are missing out on maternity services.
“Women at audited hospitals in metropolitan growth areas experience poorer access including higher fees and delays in their antenatal appointments,” the report read.
“Due to demand on birthing facilities and an inability to access labour ward beds, they also risk giving birth in non-admitted settings, such as an emergency department, without a legitimate clinical reason.”
The report also found that while demand is likely to increase at hospitals like Sunshine Hospital and Werribee Mercy, in other areas in the state it is likely to decline.
This latest data comes less than six months after Star revealed the number of births at Sunshine Hospital’s maternity unit had skyrocketed by 26 per cent in the past two years, with experts estimating the number would reach almost 4500 this financial year.
Data released by Western Health in May showed that in 2007/08 the number of births was just over 3400 and there had been a significant increase in the past three years.
By 2011/12 health experts are estimating almost 5000 births per year at the hospital.
Western Health chief executive Kathryn Cook said improving access to maternity services in growth areas was of the utmost importance.
Ms Cook said Sunshine Hospital is the major maternity service for the fastest growing area in Australia, including the municipalities of Melton and Wyndham, with a very high proportion of young families in the region.
“Maternity services within Sunshine Hospital are facing the greatest pressures of any metropolitan maternity service,” Ms Cook said.
“Sunshine Hospital provides an innovative maternity service with a high degree of continuity of care for women and we have extensive systems and processes in place to support the safety of the service that is being provided.”
Sunshine had also achieved dramatic improvements in ante-natal appointment waiting times over the previous 12 months and seen a dramatic decrease in the number of women birthing in the emergency department, Ms Cook added.
Greens MP Colleen Hartland said the results of the report were disappointing to all people living in growth suburbs.
“I’m not surprised by this report. People living in the outer suburbs tell me they move there to have a family, but there aren’t enough maternity services,” Ms Hartland said.
“The Baillieu Government needs to understand that expanding the growth areas means more than just putting houses in a paddock.”
