Emma Husar (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to draw attention to the alarming situation at Nepean Hospital in my electorate of Lindsay. The hospital already services more than 350,000 residents, and the population is growing. Recently, the independent Bureau of Health Information released a report that proved that Nepean Hospital is the most under-pressure hospital in New South Wales. It has the longest emergency department wait times and it has the longest elective surgery wait times, and the situation is getting worse. On a practical level, it means that, if you are in need of emergency care, there is a 50 per cent chance that you will be waiting more than four hours to be seen after you arrive. This is significantly outside the clinical benchmarks. It means that one in five elective surgery patients are being forced to wait longer than clinically recommended for the surgery they need. A child waits 298 days for ear, nose and throat surgery; someone waiting for a hip or knee replacement will be waiting more than 327 days; and, if you are in need of orthopaedic surgery, you will be waiting 323 days. This is simply unacceptable. It would not be allowed to happen in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. It is a tragedy that families in my electorate are being forced to endure this kind of second-class treatment. Five of the six worst hospitals in New South Wales, when it comes to wait times, are in Sydney's west. The people of Western Sydney should not have to put up with this kind of indifference. My community deserves better. This is why I am desperately calling on the Prime Minister and the Minister for Health and Aged Care to take this issue seriously.

Nepean Hospital is struggling, and our patients and health workers are bearing the brunt of this strain. Mr Turnbull and his government have made it clear that they would rather spend $200 million in February on a plebiscite. Where do this man's priorities lie? The current situation at Nepean is untenable, and it is dangerous. Clinical Associate Professor Dr Ronald Chin, who is a head and neck surgeon at Nepean, put it as succinctly as this health minister could possibly ask for when he told Channel 7: 'Our emergency department is too small for the size of population. You cannot see patients if you do not have the room to see them in.'

The government must act to ensure Nepean Hospital is properly funded. The doctors and health workers deserve the resources that allow them to treat patients within clinically recommended time frames, not what suits the government. Instead, under the state and federal Liberal governments, our community waits longer than anyone else in New South Wales and our doctors and nurses are under more pressure and more stress than any other. It cannot continue, and I again ask Malcolm Turnbull to reverse his cuts to hospitals which have contributed to the situation and direct funding to Nepean hospital immediately. I call on Mike Baird and Jillian Skinner to act now to upgrade Nepean Hospital because, so far, all they have done in five years is to commission a study—not to mention the local Liberal member for Penrith who should stop spending time in hospital wards making videos and start delivering more hospital wards. My community needs the urgent hospital upgrade, and I promise now that I will not stop fighting until this is delivered.