A long road ahead for Bathurst Base Hospital after being stripped of training accreditation

In a shock announcement, the Western NSW Local Health District (WNSWLHD) was advised on Friday by the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) that it had withdrawn accreditation for medical registrar training at Bathurst Base Hospital.

Subsequently, four medical registrars will be withdrawn from the medical roster and will leave Bathurst to continue their specialist training at other appropriate facilities.

The news came following a tumultuous week for the health service, with Bathurst Base Hospital's emergency department rated one of the worst in the Central West, scoring red light ratings for emergency, urgent and semi-urgent treatment times, and a yellow light for non-urgent treatment.

On Saturday, Bathurst Health Services Action Group spokesperson Warren Aubin, also a Bathurst Regional councillor, said the hospital is in dire straits.

He doubts enough locums or contracted medical officers will be found quick enough to fill the void following the loss of four medical registrars at the hospital.

It was a concern shared by local general practitioner Dr Ross Wilson, who said, given the state of play, it was possible the health district would struggle to fill the positions.

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"No one in their right mind [wants to walk into that]," Dr Wilson said.

"That is why finding GPs for remote and rural areas is extremely hard and they are paying big, big money."

Dr Wilson was also unsure what the news meant for Bathurst Base Hospital's short-term future.

"I really don't know. I don't think anyone can predict that," he said.

"We've got registrars guaranteed for the next week, so there is going to be some real scrambling."

Chief executive officer of the WNSWLHD Mark Spittal was unable to confirm on Saturday what, if any, services within the hospital would be affected.

He said any suggestion of services being affected at this stage was "a hypothetical situation" and stressed the LHD is doing all it can to prevent that from occurring.

"We have people who are working around the clock to resolve this problem and we are fully committed to doing that," he said.

Still, he said on Saturday he wasn't in a position to make guarantees.

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"I've done it long enough to know that's not a thing to do, but what I can absolutely say is that there is no sense in which the LHD would not see it as absolutely disastrous if the medical services at Bathurst were compromised," Mr Spittal said.

He said there were a number of contingency plans in place, which include taking locums from smaller hospitals.

"Some of our smaller sites, where we do manage to get locums into, we may need to pull some of those locums into Bathurst as a higher priority given its workload."

He said that will be very much be a last resort, and the end goal is to find a long term solution.

"What we are attempting to do in Bathurst, however, is not just replace the registrars with a different locum doctor everyday," he said.

"What our goal is is to secure people that will stay for a longer period of time because obviously that enables us to give stability and consistency to the health service here.

"This is an extremely difficult situation that no wants to find themselves in. Our goal is obviously to get Bathurst Hospital re-accredited as soon as we can and we are absolutely pulling out every stop."

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