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THE Peel Health Campus (PHC) children’s ward will remain permanently open following community concerns and questions about its inconsistent opening hours.
Member for Mandurah David Templeman lashed out at the State Government in June and raised questions in Parliament as to why the Sarich ward was not consistently operating since opening in 2010.
As a result of his queries it was revealed the ward had only been open 265 days out of a possible 565.
On more than 200 of the days the ward was closed there were 212 children admitted to the hospital who were treated in general wards.
Answers to Mr Templeman’s questions revealed 622 child patients had been treated in the ward within the past two years but there had been 1258 child in-patients admitted to the hospital in the same time.
One of those patients was Trudy Murnane’s son Ryan who was six weeks old when he was first admitted for breathing difficulties last year.
Mrs Murnane said Ryan spent a week at PHC and in that time spent six hours in the emergency department before being told her son would not be able to be treated in the children’s ward as it wasn’t open, so he was taken to the general ward.
The mother of three said the treatment from staff was “very good” but without the children’s ward open the facilities needed weren’t able to be provided.
“In the Sarich ward they have oxygen built into the wall but in general wards they have an oxygen tank that sits next to the bed,” she said.
“There was no cot available in the general ward until Ryan’s condition deteriorated so I had to hold him for a long time, which I was unable to do.”
The reason Mrs Murnane said she was given for the ward not being open was lack of demand.
“I know that such a facility cannot operate with only one child,” she said.
“More children were admitted and we were moved to the Sarich paediatric wing and remained there for the remainder of our stay.”
Mrs Murnane said at no time during the hospital stay did she feel her son’s health was compromised, but even so, she didn’t understand why a public facility that had the facilities to lessen the stress for families seemed to always be closed.
“The facilities on Sarich are great,” she said.
“It’s such a shame the facilities were not being utilised.
“I think more people would take their children to PHC instead of Rockingham if there was a guarantee the facilities were offered.”
Mr Templeman said the largely community-funded $3.4million resource had been underutilised with just 49 per cent of children admitted since it opened.
“I don’t know what went wrong,” he said.
“But this was always meant to be a partnership between the Barnett Government and the local community.”
“This is a trend that must be reversed,” he said.
“We must make full use of our new facility, a facility that the Peel Health Foundation and our community worked so hard to get built.”
Yesterday a hospital spokesperson conceded the figures provided to Mr Templeman were correct and that, until now, the ward had been closed when deemed not to be cost effective.
“The board was concerned about the under-utilisation of the ward,” she said.
“The hospital is now willing to absorb the additional operating costs in the short term in order to serve the community.”
PHC chief operating officer Ashton Foley said as of June 27 the Sarich Ward would run around the clock.
“The board and everyone at PHC are committed and have always been committed to providing the best possible patient care,” she said.
“In the past … PHC has struggled to justify the operating costs associated with keeping a full ward staffed when only one or two paediatric patients have been in attendance.”
According to the campus, the ward has been well utilised since June 27.
