By Charlene Gatt
LIBERAL MP Bernie Finn has vowed to bring Western Hospital up to scratch after touring the site last week.
In a win for Star’s Help Our Hospital campaign, Mr Finn visited the Footscray hospital last Monday to draw up a priority list of works to take to Health Minister David Davis.
Star accompanied Mr Finn on the tour, and witnessed his reaction as he was faced with:
• Having to park three blocks from the hospital because the hospital car park was full and there was no available car parking nearby
• The stench coming up through the first level from pipes underneath the floor
• Patients who had come straight from surgery sharing lifts with everyone else
• Uneven flooring, with cracks covered up by tape
• Extensive trolley damage along the walls, including some holes
• Crowded working spaces and doctors and specialists consulting in hallways because there’s no rooms available
• Incomplete wheelchair facilities for people in the emergency department
Mr Finn told Star he was staggered by the level of neglect at the hospital.
“We’ve got a fair bit of work to do,” he said.
“It’s a hospital that has been neglected for a very long time.
“It’s in need of a total renovation, if not rebuild.
“We’ve (the West) been overlooked for so long, and now we have to turn that around.
“You only have one chance to make a good first impression, and the smell here is horrific.
“The cramped conditions of the emergency department were totally unsatisfactory, and the doctors and specialists were consulting in corridors – and not very big corridors.
“This hospital is older than I am – and that’s really saying something. Apart from an odd coat of paint, not much has been done at all (since the hospital opened).”
Mr Finn detailed his experience in Parliament on Wednesday and called on the Health Minister to build a new hospital building for Western Hospital.
Mr Finn also suggested refurbishing the former Footscray Psychiatric Centre across the road from the hospital – an unoccupied grey four-storey building – as a short term measure to help the hospital.
Western Health CEO Kathryn Cook said Western Hospital would be unable to cope with the current and future population growth, despite putting various measures in place to alleviate demand.
“Unfortunately, not all members of our communities recognise that, despite the older infrastructure at the Western Hospital site we offer the highest standard of tertiary hospital care,” she said.
“We know that this often leads people to travel further afield for their care, even when it could be provided by Western Health.”
