GP Super Clinics - Is there ever anything for nothing - 8 ?!

Super clinic collapse warning went unheeded

17th Oct 2011 Byron Kaye   all articles by this author

HEALTH Minister Nicola Roxon’s office was warned 14 months ago that the Sorell GP super clinic would collapse without extra funding but promised to “make a priority of sorting this immediately post election”, MO can reveal.

But rather than give a $1.5 million lifeline as requested by its operators, the Department of Health and Ageing asked the clinic owner after the 2010 election to cut costs by substituting curtains for walls between doctors’ rooms, lowering the entire building, and relying on “natural ventilation” instead of toilet exhaust systems.

Edward Gauden, CEO of Sorell Integrated Healthcare (SIH), which was to operate the Sorrel super clinic, refused these requests but, encouraged by Ms Roxon’s office, was holding out for other commonwealth funding when he learned on the evening news this month that the minister had scrapped the project.

Emails between the offices of Ms Roxon and local Labor MP Dick Adams, the department and Mr Gauden, obtained by MO, confirm Mr Gauden’s claims that he had long warned the government that the super clinic – which had support among local doctors – could not be built for the allotted $2.5 million, and that he was repeatedly assured the government would step in to save it.

On 12 August 2010, with the federal election less than two weeks away, Mr Adams’s electorate officer Dee Alty wrote to the minister warning that if a funding solution could not be found that same day, SIH would be “announcing publicly tomorrow that they will not be going ahead as they do not have the funding… It is just insufficient”.

The email also questioned “why the Sorell super clinic is not being seen as a proper super clinic which should like the others attract the $5 million”.

Ms Roxon’s chief of staff Angela Pratt responded that the government was in caretaker mode and could not commit new money, but advised that Mr Adams “should say [to Mr Gauden] that he has spoken to the minister’s office and been given an assurance that we will look at the issue post election if Labor is returned, to get the clinic back on track”.

Ms Alty pressed further, writing the next day that Mr Gauden needed assurance the building would be finished by the end of 2010. Ms Pratt replied: “We will make a priority of sorting this immediately post election… Obviously we don’t want it to fall over either!”

Ms Roxon announced on 7 October 2011 the clinic would not go ahead. Three days later the government committed another $3.2 million to the troubled Redcliffe super clinic in Queensland, on top of an existing $10 million outlay. A spokesperson for Ms Roxon said the department met with SIH “on numerous occasions to assist them in reworking their proposal but unfortunately we have recently been made aware that they will not proceed on this original basis”.

Mr Adams said his office had pressed for more funds, but Mr Gauden should have been able to build the clinic for $2.5 million.

Tags: Sorell; Super Clinics; Roxon; DOHA

Comments

DrPhil
18th Oct 2011
3:27pm

curtains not walls between consulting rooms???? is this 1948 or what????

Limmie
18th Oct 2011
4:08pm

I wonder if Roxon will be happy to see her doctor if the doctor were consulting in a space that is partitioned off with a curtain rather than sound dampened or sound proof walls? How ridiculous is this Minister? I bet, if MO asked her directly, she will vow that she was not aware of the machinations going on with the SIH. Once again, we see evidence that decisions about superclinics have been political rather than business-based. The waste of tax payers money by this Labor government is the same as the days of Whitlam's largess. This spend-a-thon has to stop. As taxpayers, we are not getting value for money.
I don't know the medical manpower supply for Sorell nor whether there is indeed a need for same. It seems the support of local GPs made no difference to the decisions made by the Minister. I wonder, if the local GPs were vociferous in condemning the superclinic, the Minister might consider the request for further funds for the SIH as worthy of supporting. Hasn't that been the pattern of her behaviour. Anything she can do to get stuck into medical practitioners, she will do. Add this to the insult to the Medicare rebate for non-VR doctors now becoming lower than that of "Noctors", can we call this style of governance fair and equitable?

GP Super Clinics - Is there ever anything for nothing - 6 ?!

Bailout: more millions for struggling super clinic

10th Oct 2011 Byron Kaye   all articles by this author 

Medical Observer 

HEALTH Minister Nicola Roxon has given a $3.2 million bailout to Queensland’s Redcliffe GP super clinic, just three days after another super clinic collapsed because the government had refused it extra funding.

The lifeline – which takes the federal government’s spending on the beleaguered Redcliffe project to $13.2 million – follows weeks of tense negotiations as the construction company stopped work claiming it had not been paid.

It also comes after the super clinic’s owner, Redcliffe Hospital Foundation (RHF), failed to secure a loan from the Queensland government and the Queensland Health Minister referred the management of the project to the state’s corruption commission. The commission has since ruled out a formal investigation.

The builder, Constructions Group, had given RHF until the end of September to pay before it considered legal action. But after an emergency meeting on that day between federal government officials, RHF and Constructions Group, the builder extended the deadline to this Friday.

In a statement today Ms Roxon said construction was set to resume, with the extra federal government money to be used to pay outstanding building fees plus the cost of completing the project.

The statement said RHF’s ability to raise finance had been “constrained by it being a Queensland state hospital foundation and the project being on state hospital land”.

In committing the extra money, the federal government was “recognising the unique circumstances of this project”.

Construction would be finished in the “coming months with the doors to open in 2012”, Ms Roxon’s statement said.

Ms Roxon also effectively downgraded RHF’s role in the super clinic, saying the foundation would remain the owner and landlord of the super clinic but it must hire a clinical operator to run it.

Foundation chair Dr Boris Chern said this would “enable us to concentrate on our core role – to represent the interests of the community and to raise funds to best meet community need”.

The news follows Ms Roxon’s announcement on Friday that a planned $2.5 million super clinic in Sorell, Tasmania, would not proceed after the operator asked for more government funding, which Ms Roxon said “is not available”.

In a statement about that super clinic, Ms Roxon indicated the area might be better served by a GP infrastructure grant.

“All over the country, including here in Tasmania, GP practices are being upgraded through our popular primary care infrastructure grants. Similar upgrades of GP practices in the Sorell area could be considered for this funding,” that statement said.

Shadow Secretary for Primary Healthcare Dr Andrew Southcott said bailing out the Redcliffe super clinic while abandoning the Sorell super clinic – four years after it was promised – showed the super clinics program was a “shambles from day one”.

“[Ms Roxon] has a lot of explaining to do regarding the Redcliffe GP super clinic, and I call on her to do exactly that by making a full disclosure on the financial issues that have been plaguing this clinic,” Dr Southcott said in a statement.

Tags: super clinic, nicola roxon, redcliffe, bailout, sorell, tasmania

Comments: 

Solidarity
10th Oct 2011
11:05pm

Well said, Dr Southcott.But we won't get any explaining at all out of Mizzz Roxon; the whole spend is ideologically driven like every other Labour Federal project that is in the news at the moment-it will take years to dig Australia out of this mess but the best way to add your spade's worth is to show your opposition to superclinics now. The more you add your voice to groups like Doctors Action the more the profession and the public can show up this sort of mismanagement and profoundly wrong policy choice, and keep the Coalition to a fair and sensible health policy before , during and after the next Federal Election.Whenever it comes. Let's have some more detail about Dr Boris Chern, too.

GP Super Clinics - Is there ever anything for nothing - 5 ?!

GP Super Clinics rise and fall

• By Gemma Collins on  10 October 2011 - 6Minutes

It seems that one GP Super Clinic’s loss is another one’s gain as the government announces a million-dollar bailout for a Queensland Super Clinic only a few days after plans for a Tasmanian clinic are scrapped. 


The Redcliffe GP Super Clinic is being given another $3.2 million after work on the development was forced to stop last month because of a lack of funding, Health Minister Nicola Roxon announced today.

And this comes only a few days after it emerged plans for the Sorell GP Super Clinic in Tasmania, one of four planned for the state, have been scrapped because it needed additional funding which Ms Roxon said was “not available” (link).
The government insists that the clinic’s $2.5m funding will instead be “invested in improving frontline health facilities” through possible GP infrastructure grants.

Meanwhile extra funding to Redcliffe GP Super Clinic comes after the government said it was difficult for the Redcliffe Hospital Foundation, which is managing the project, to access other forms of financing because of it being a Queensland state hospital foundation and the project being on state hospital land.

“Recognising the unique circumstances of this project, the Commonwealth has agreed to provide up to $3.2 million to enable the Redcliffe GP Super Clinic to be completed”, Ms Roxon said, after sending in former AGPN chief David Butt as ‘troubleshooter’.

The Federal government has already put $10 million into the project but work stalled because the State government refused to sign off on a loan, according to reports in the Courier Mail (link).