Unions, staff and former patients have rallied outside Hobart’s Executive Building, demanding urgent action to save the city’s last private inpatient mental health facility.
The Hobart Clinic will close its doors by October 31 after more than 30 years of service, citing financial pressures that made the facility unsustainable.
Its closure will strip up to 28 mental health beds from Tasmania’s already stretched system.
Health and Community Services Union State Secretary Robbie Moore said the public system simply cannot absorb the loss.
“The Hobart Clinic is the only service in the state offering vital treatments such as inpatient TMS (Transcranial magnetic stimulation),” he said.
“If it closes, patients will need to deteriorate to crisis point before being admitted through emergency. Wait times will blow out, public services will be pushed beyond breaking point and lives will be put at risk.”
More than 1,500 Tasmanians have signed a petition calling on the government to keep the facility open.
Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation Tasmanian Branch Secretary Emily Shepherd said the suggestion patients could move to Peacock House or the Royal Hobart Hospital was unrealistic.
“We know that the Tasmanian Health Service (THS) has relied on the Hobart Clinic’s inpatient beds when the THS have not had capacity,” she said.
“To suggest the THS can somehow now absorb the needs of an additional 28 inpatients with no additional bed stock than was already in use along with the Hobart Clinic, is ingenuous at best.”
She said many patients have moderate mental health needs that don’t meet the high-acuity threshold for the Royal.
Health Minister Bridget Archer has blamed the federal government for the facility’s closure, calling it “another sad example of the failing viability of privately-run health facilities across the country”.
Archer has written to her federal counterpart requesting urgent talks on options including higher Medicare rebates and addressing the psychiatrist shortage.
“The Hobart Clinic has acknowledged that even with renewed state intervention, their business model was not sustainable,” Archer said.
“Every dollar spent on a private provider is one less dollar we can spend in the public system where it’s most needed.”
She said Labor leader Josh Willie should pick up the phone to former Tasmanian Labor leader Rebecca White – now the federal assistant health minister – “and advocate for Tasmania”.
“The federal government controls the levers that affect private hospital sustainability, primarily private insurance premiums and they are the only ones who can fix it,” Archer said.
Labor’s shadow health minister Sarah Lovell accused the Liberals of passing the buck.
“The Liberals have the power to intervene and keep the Hobart Clinic open until a long-term solution is found, they just won’t,” she said.
“The minister’s job is to fix these problems. Not to point the finger and walk away.”
