Greens candidates meeting with Central West healthcare workers

Greens upper house candidate Dr Amanda Cohn visited the Central West on Tuesday, March 14 to meet with healthcare workers in Bathurst and Orange to hear their concerns.

Dr Cohn, who herself is a general practitioner, was joined in Bathurst by the Greens' local candidate, Kay Nankervis, who stressed that health services in the electorate are falling short.

"We know that in Bathurst there are a whole range of problems that we've got at the moment," Ms Nankervis said.

"We've had two terrible report cards on Bathurst Base Hospital just last month, so I'm very glad that MLC upper house candidate for the Greens, Dr Amanda Cohn, is here in Bathurst to actually talk to all the local people to find out exactly what's happening on the ground here."

READ MORE: Bathurst Base Hospital falls short of emergency department benchmarks

The problems being experienced in Bathurst are not unique.

Dr Cohn said it is a similar story right across regional NSW.

"My firsthand experience has been of a public health system that is in absolute crisis after 12 years of mismanagement and underfunding by this Liberal-National government," she said.

"We have a staffing shortage. There are nurses and paramedics leaving the profession or moving interstate to Queensland and Victoria in droves because the pay and conditions here in NSW are terrible."

Nurses and midwives have been calling for improved staff-to-patient ratios, with this one of their key demands when they went on strike on multiple occasions in 2022.

The Greens are advocating for these ratios, which would create safer working conditions in hospitals and lead to better outcomes for patients.

"We know that ratios save lives, improve working conditions, and they save money," Dr Cohn said.

"In Queensland, we know that it's been cost-saving to implement ratios because patients' length of stay in hospital and people are less likely to be readmitted to hospital.

"These are some really important actions that in the balance of power the Greens will be pushing the next government to deliver."

The Greens also want to scrap the wage cap, which limits how much the wages of public sector employees can increase.

This would open the door for another Greens plan, to give nurses, midwives and paramedics in the public system a 15 per cent pay rise.

Dr Cohn and Ms Nankervis said the party has a plan for regional healthcare, which in addition to ratios and pay rises, includes:

Dr Cohn said the health outcomes for people in regional and rural NSW are "absolutely devastating" and "totally unacceptable".

"Your health should not depend on your postcode and what we need is real reform to the way that health is funded and managed, and not band-aid solutions," she said.

READ ALSO: What Bathurst candidates say they'll do to improve health services

In Bathurst, there is also concern about the $200 million redevelopment of the hospital.

Staffing continues to be an issue at the hospital and there are fears that, when complete, the bigger hospital will open without enough staff to operate effectively.

Dr Cohn admitted that attracting staff is an issue, but she believe the ideas the Greens want to implement will help to retain and attract people to the profession.

"We know from the union that the 12 per cent of nurses who've left the profession in the last couple of years would actually come back if [ratios were] implemented," she said.

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