THE NSW government will choose a private bidder to provide long-awaited X-ray services at Nelson Bay’s Tomaree Hospital, in a decision Labor has slammed as a blow to a community in need of better public health services.
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The revelation Nelson Bay will gain a privatised X-ray service is in a NSW Health tender document that also invites providers to take over medical imaging, including MRI scans, on-site radiology and general X-rays, in Belmont, Cessnock and Singleton district hospitals.
NSW Health plans to build an X-ray unit at Tomaree Hospital, and will ultimately expect the successful private bidder to provide general X-rays from that unit from at least 8.30am to 4.30pm, Monday to Friday.
The unit will also be expected to offer semi-urgent and urgent X-rays 24 hours a day, and will include “prepared spaces” to house CT and ultrasound scanning equipment.
But Port Stephens state MP Kate Washington, who backed Labor’s $1 million federal election pledge for medical imaging at Tomaree, said the government owed her constituents “public services in a public hospital”.
“This is part of the systematic privatisation of our health system by the Coalition government,” Ms Washington said.
“I can’t see that there are any guarantees that people without private healthcare in Nelson Bay can afford these services.”
Labor health spokesman Walt Secord called on the government to “drop the culture of cover-up” around its tender for privatised imaging services, which also includes hospitals in Tamworth, Armidale, Moree, Glen Innes and Tenterfield.
“This tender document is a bolt from the blue,” Mr Secord said.
“If they’re using this as a back door way to expand their privatisation of the health system, it’s unfair to the people who rely on those imaging services.”
But Michael Symonds, the director of Hunter New England Imaging, said the tender was “not about the privatisation of imaging services”.
“For more than 15 years we have had contracts in place with private imaging providers,” Mr Symonds said.
“This new tender process seeks to replace the current contracts we have in place which are due to expire shortly.”
But the new tender, which closes on November 1, will add three privatised imaging services to the current arrangement, Mr Symonds said.