'Getting on with it': States dismiss mayor's call for further hospital funds

In response to Cr King's mayoral minute tabled at the Monday, March 11, Albury Council meeting, where she said "significant further investment" was required for the single site hospital development to become a reality, both states said they were "getting on with" delivering the $558 million project.

Cr King said in a motion carried at the meeting that the council called on the NSW, Victorian and federal governments to work together to "expedite the realisation of the Albury-Wodonga regional hospital master plan to ensure the hospital meets the needs of the service".

She further said that "scaling back proposed works to fit within the $558 million budget (estimated in 2022) will not deliver the outcomes required by Albury Wodonga Health for our community and health care providers".

But a NSW government spokesperson refuted the council's stance.

"This is the second largest investment in a regional hospital in the history of NSW, and NSW Health is getting on with the planning and design process to deliver it," the spokesperson told The Border Mail on Tuesday, March 12.

The message was the same from the Victorian government.

"We are getting on with delivering what we said we would - a redeveloped Albury Base Hospital," a spokesperson said.

"Once complete, the massive $558 million redevelopment will significantly increase accessibility to healthcare and enhance the services available to the border community."

Clinicians have raised concerns about hospital services split across two campuses, with some services, such as anaesthetics, duplicated at both sites.

The Victorian government said it had listened to those concerns and expressed that the new hospital would deliver critically important healthcare, including an intensive care unit, maternity and paediatric services under one roof.

The $558 million redevelopment of the expanded Albury hospital is set to include more operating theatres, a bigger emergency department, expanded ICU capacity, a new short-stay unit, and additional beds.

A project update with an overview of consultation activities and feedback from health staff, stakeholders and the Border community was recently published by the NSW government.

Farrer MP Sussan Ley commended Cr King and the council for highlighting the funding shortfall hampering a full Albury hospital redevelopment.

"Sussan is waiting for further advice from the city on the additional assistance they wish to pursue from the Australian government," a spokesperson for Ms Ley said.

In November last year, Ms Ley urged the NSW and Victorian governments to consider a private-public partnership to boost funding for the Albury hospital upgrade.

"Unfortunately state governments don't like using the private system, but they need to look at things differently, because if public funding does not build the infrastructure we need, (then) we need to look at ways of a partnership with private health that would actually share that cost and give our community a strong hospital that has both public and private facilities, not that dissimilar to the cancer centre now," she said at the time.

Better Border Health spokesperson Michelle Cowan said the advocacy group welcomed the council's acknowledgement of concerns about the scaled-back redevelopment works "that will fail to deliver on the promise of a single-site hospital".

"We join the call from Albury Council for state and federal governments to come together for a better hospital deal for Albury-Wodonga and surrounds," Ms Cowan said.

"The benefits of redeveloping the existing Albury campus fades with each new phase of the project. We know the clinical services plan has been scaled down and when completed, the redevelopment will be barely adequate for our current needs.

"The recently released master plan, already six-months-old, is missing critical information, but it does reveal a complex, multi-staged project, with new buildings such as the ED and cath (catheterisation) lab being demolished and parts of the existing hospital having to remain in use for many years.

"These are extraordinary, unacceptable challenges for staff and patients to accept over many, many years of construction.

"Albury Council knows, as we all do, that additional funding is needed. Governments can no longer ignore the united call - we say the time has come for a complete and transparent reassessment of the decision to redevelop the Albury campus.

"The 2021 master plan had well-considered arguments for recommending a new hospital on a new site, and justification is growing every day."