The beleaguered Peel Health Campus was so understaffed last week that local mothers were unable to give birth at the hospital.
However, senior hospital sources say the transition to public management has not been smooth.
They claim the hospital was placed on code yellow on Wednesday which means it had zero patient capacity.
But the South Metropolitan Health Service that manages Peel Health Campus denied the hospital was on code yellow.
However, the spokesperson confirmed that women due to give birth at Peel were relocated.
“Due to the unavailability of an on-call anaesthetist, we activated a bypass arrangement on Wednesday, September 18 whereby women due to birth at Peel birthed safely at Rockingham General Hospital or Fiona Stanley Hospital,” they said.
“The safety of our patients is our first priority. Like all maternity hospitals, we have robust safety processes in place to deal with the known unpredictability of maternity services and women going into spontaneous labour, including well-established bypass arrangements.”
The senior staffer said just one midwife was at the Campus on Wednesday while an obstetrician was on call.
It can be a more than 30 minute drive from Mandurah to Rockingham during peak hour and more than 50 minutes drive to Fiona Stanley Hospital.
However, the senior staffer said conditions at the hospital were so bad that patients were placed in staff offices due to a lack of space.
They also claimed the hospital had no access to computers for at least a week during the transition from Ramsay Health Care to State Government management.
“While Peel Health Campus is a busy local hospital, we are well able to meet community demand,” the SMHS spokesperson said.
“We actively manage operational processes, both day to day and in the longer term, to assist with capacity, patient flow and inpatient bed availability whilst ensuring safe, high-quality care and patients are accommodated in clinically appropriate areas.
“No patients have been put in staff offices.”
“Since taking over the operation of the hospital in mid-August, we have commenced a broad range of strategies to further improve access to ED and other services and have not needed to implement any capacity code yellows during this time.”
Health Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson’s office declined to comment stating it was an “operational matter”.
Peel Health Campus is the only hospital catering to Mandurah’s population of almost 100,000 people and the Peel region’s wider population of 143,000.
Despite this there has been little investment in the hospital in years. A major expansion of the under-pressure campus was announced four years ago but a construction timeframe remains unclear.
The State Government first announced plans and $152 million in funding for the project in 2020, under then-Premier Mark McGowan.
The announcement promised a mental health emergency centre, additional operating theatre, more than 60 additional inpatient beds, 15 palliative care hospice beds, 12 chemotherapy places, extra outpatient services, a new medical imaging services building, reconfiguration of the emergency department and expansion of the day procedure unit.
The Government this month released a tender for construction of a new ring road south of the campus for traffic access, additional staff and public carparks and a central energy plant shell in preparation for Western Power upgrades.
The State Government has also promised a new community mental health and specialist community eating disorder service to open in 2025, with the Federal Government committing $25 million for the eating disorder centre.
Ms Sanderson was questioned about the timeline of construction of the hospital services and mental health and eating disorder centres.
A spokeswoman for Ms Sanderson said planning for the redevelopment was “ongoing” and the State Government would have more to say on the timeline for the project once a managing contractor had been appointed.
“The current tender for Peel Health Campus is for the forward works including road, parking and site service infrastructure,” she said.
The spokeswoman said the community mental health facility was on track to open in 2025, which would accommodate the specialist community eating disorders service, saying only it would be located “in the Peel community”.
She also noted it was well known there had been “challenges in the construction market on a global scale”.
State Government ministers including Ms Sanderson and Mandurah MLA David Templeman were celebrating the hospital’s future in August when it returned to public control, after being run by private contractor Ramsay Health Care for more than a decade.
The transition was announced alongside the expansion plans in 2020 and was originally scheduled to occur in 2023, before being delayed a year.
Despite the tender relating only to forward works, a statement from Ms Sanderson said the Government was “investing in a major redevelopment of Peel Health Campus that will ensure it continues to meet the needs of the region into the future”.
“The upgrade will mean more beds, more outpatient services and more mental health services,” she said.
Mr Templeman described the tender as a “significant step forwards”, citing the delivery of “more beds, an additional operating theatre and a new mental health emergency centre”.
The hospital’s recent history has been marred by controversy and concerns, including a partial shutdown mid-last year when mould was found in air-conditioning ducts.
Surgeries were cancelled, ambulances diverted and patients were transferred after the discovery was made in May 2023 and the hospital returned to full capacity after a deep clean.
A decade earlier, the hospital was subject to a 2013 parliamentary inquiry into allegations doctors were receiving kickbacks for admitting patients.
Now-discredited whistleblower Ashton Foley made the claims in 2012 against her employer Health Solutions, a private contractor tasked with running the hospital.
Though she was later found to be a woman named Michelle Gonzalez — who was wanted for fraud in the US — the inquiry found deficiencies in meeting contractual obligations, inappropriate admissions and high turnover of management, but no fraud.
Source Agencies
