The CEO of Moyne Health Services, David Lee, was the guest speaker at the Rotary Club of Port Fairy's Dinner Meeting on 19th November 2012.

David provided an overview of the Moyne Health Services "Master Plan Development" covering the proposed development of the local hospital and residential care services in Port Fairy.

Introducing David Lee was Rotarian, Bernie Waixel, who had preceded David in the role of CEO Moyne Health Services. 

Bernie explained that David had come from a role at Red Cliffs before moving to Port Fairy about 5 years ago.  He has a Masters Degree in Commerce and is currently undertaking studies in Law.

ImageAs the Hospital Board relies on the CEO to execute the strategic plan for the Health Service then it is appropriate that David was invited to talk about the new Master Plan for the hospital precinct.

David opened by explaining that the Master Plan is a dynamic evolving document (a work in progress) and although in the early stages, the Plan has cost $100K in architect fees and another $100K for the feasibility stage.

They are now implementing Stage-1 / Phase-1 centred on development of the Community Health Centre.  Stage-2 will see an upgrade of Residential Care facilities.  All up, in current dollar terms, the project is expected to cost $57M.

David briefly covered the issues, drivers for change and the actions that form part of their master plan and presented progressive diagrams of the changes for the precinct.

Issues:

Some of the key issues include:

  • The fact that the current site is essentially landlocked between residential homes which makes it difficult to expand;
  • Parking and traffic congestion in the vicinity of the hospital;
  • The poor drainage and the fall of land at the current site;
  • The need to “acquire” some privately owned residential space surrounding the hospital and aged care facilities;
  • The age profile of doctors. Despite being well served by seven doctors, a very good number for a small, rural town, the current age profile of the GPs in the Health Service highlights the need to recruit younger doctors to the town.

ImageDrivers for change:

The following drivers for change were identified in regard to local need:

  • Moyne Health conducted a rigorous Needs Analysis to ascertain future needs and trends;
  • The effect of the “Living Longer – Living Better” program on life expectancy and its effect on health needs in the future;
  • The increasing consumer expectations in terms of general health services and residential care facilities;
  • The need to ensure the sustainability of a general health service;
  • The future requirements and trends for community aged care services;
  • Medical service succession planning, particularly in regards to doctors.

Actions:

Actions outlined in the strategic plan include:

  • Analysing the trend in health care needs, in particular for acute care hospital beds.  The hospital is currently operating 15 beds but at a low (45%) occupancy rate in Port Fairy.  Will there be more or less demand in the future?  How will this affect funding?
  • Analysing future requirements for residential aged care beds.  Currently Port Fairy has 82 beds (plus 5 high dependency beds) operating at 92% occupancy.  This raises the challenge of balancing the budget on aged care operations given the need to work close to capacity.

Proposals:

David outlined key features of the plans to date including detailed diagrams of the Stage 1 and Stage 2 phases of the development strategy.

Stage1 will include the integration of the hospital, primary care and community health service in Port Fairy into a single building.  The plan proposes more off-street parking in the precinct to comply with Council requirements and alleviate disruption to residents, provide “close to building” parking and less walking for the elderly.

Stage 2 will see the overhaul of residential care services into a single facility, all under the one roof, rather than the current Moyneyana Hostel and Belfast House facilities. 

The design criteria embodied in both stages is to develop state of the art, modern facilities that are environmentally sustainable.