PLANS to restructure the existing Medicare Local network into a series of national primary health networks will do no favours for Border and North East clients.
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The immediate problem is that Albury and Wodonga will be separated along state boundaries, with Albury hospital included in the vast western NSW network and Wodonga hospital included in the Murray network that extends along the Murray River.
Until now, Hume, Lower Murray and Loddon Mallee Murray were the nation’s only three cross-border Medicare Locals.
But now it’s back to the future with the country’s first cross-Border health entity once again divided by a state border and by a federal government.
The Hume Medicare Local office in Albury seems destined to close and its staff either losing their jobs of being redeployed.
That would be a nasty setback for our region where Medicare Local staff have been working alongside the Albury Wod- onga Health service as a cross-border health provider.
Chief executive of Medicare Local, David Dart, has a justified fear local knowledge will be lost as a result or the introduction of two larger networks that extend to the South Australian border.