Border health advocates have slammed a NSW and Victorian government claim that they had never considered demolishing the $36 million emergency department at Albury hospital.
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This is despite a recently released master plan for the hospital's $558 million redevelopment clearly stating the ED would be demolished and relocated to another building.
Better Border Health spokeswoman Michelle Cowan said NSW Health Minister Ryan Park ruling out the demolition of the ED on Monday, Febrary 4, "was puzzling".
"We're honestly shaking our heads and questioning what information about this entire project can the community rely upon?" Ms Cowan said.
"Whether the slated demolition of the not-yet-open $36 million emergency department is within the scope of current funded Albury hospital redevelopment works or not - the proposal to demolish the ED is in the master plan, in black and white, and must be there for a reason.
"We know the new ED will only meet our current needs."
On Monday, Mr Park told The Sydney Morning Herald the demolition of the new building was "never under consideration by this government".
"This was a master plan, not government policy," Mr Park said.
A Victorian government spokesman also told the SMH there were no plans to demolish the new emergency department.
Ms Cowan said the NSW and Victorian governments, in dismissing the ED demolition proposal, were "effectively rejecting their own just-released master plan".
"This is the second master plan governments have rejected," she said. "It started with the greenfield site recommendation of the 2021 master plan being ignored.
"Now Victoria and NSW governments are already discrediting the recent master plan work of NSW Health Infrastructure.
"If the 2021 clinical services plan and master plan was not quietly shelved, and governments had accepted the recommendation at that time, we might already have a stake in the ground on a greenfield site.
"By the time the proposed clinical services building is completed in Albury, the ED will be already be inadequate. What a joke."
Member for Farrer and Deputy Liberal Party Leader Sussan Ley, when asked if she considered there to be a lack of transparency regarding the project, accused the NSW government of "hiding information the community deserves to have".
"We deserve to have all of the information about a better hospital system, whether it be a master plan, the building, or a clinical services plan for everybody's better health for the future," Ms Ley said. "I'm really disappointed."
Ms Ley said she believed the hospital redevelopment needed private hospital infrastructure, alongside public hospital infrastructure.
"I expect NSW and Victoria to approach the private hospitals and see whether together they can build the sort of infrastructure that we deserve in this community," she said.
"We always have better health when we have the private and public systems combining. We have a high level of private insurance in this region and we have people who rightly expect to be able to use that insurance in a private hospital setting.
"When the private hospital system is strong, the public system is strong ... so bringing the two together brings together the best possible infrastructure for the region."
Albury mayor Kylie King said more questions needed to be raised over the redevelopment project.
"I recall the (Albury Wodonga Health) CEO Bill Appleby saying at the time that this announcement would meet our current and immediate health needs," Cr King said.
"If he's got concerns, though, we need to ask more questions. We're also really disappointed that the master plan that was released last year lacked the detail and we did say at the time it showed the capacity for the site to host future stages so that was encouraging.
"But ... we have since been very active writing to ministers that ... our community demands to see the detail and I guess it was disappointing in the way it was released and now no one's really answering questions that have come up in relation to that master plan."
