Vol. No. Vol. 2618No. 4627
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SHOW TIME: Smart Artz Theatre’s Oedipus the King’s four-day run begins tomorrow at Horsham Town Hall. Featuring Eashaan Dassanayaka as Oedipus and Juliet Hayday as Tiresias, pictured, under award-winning director Amy Anselmi, the contemporary retelling of Sophocles’ timeless tragedy is a must-see. The first show tomorrow is a performance for 100 students from across the region, with tickets still available for the remaining community performances on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Horsham Town Hall website or box office. Story, page 18. Picture: PAUL CARRACHER
Health merger threat H
BY LAUREN HENRY
ealth services across the Grampians region are facing a merger into a single entity under a Victorian health system reform.
An independent expert advisory committee, EAC, is leading a Health Services Plan that will provide a draft report with recommendations to the Department of Health. Amalgamation of services are one option being proposed as part of changes to the structure and design of the state’s healthcare system. A new system has been likened to
New South Wales, where there are nine regional health districts, as opposed to the 76 health services currently spread across Victoria. The merger comes after health services in Stawell, Horsham, Edenhope and Dimboola merged with Ballarat in 2021 to create Grampians Health. West Wimmera Health Service, WWHS, responded to community concerns last week to provide information on an issue where the public has been largely left in the dark. Chief executive officer Richie Dodds said he understood the draft report to contain two options – option
one to retain and strengthen the existing formal regional partnership model with WWHS remaining a ‘standalone’ entity with its own board of directors and management team; or option two, to consolidate rural health services into single region-wide entities. “In WWHS’s final submission to the EAC in April this year, we clearly expressed our full support for option one, and our opposition to option two,” he said. “We have been assured regardless of the above, this process will not result in the closure of individual hospitals or sites.”
Mr Dodds said WWHS was on track to record a small operating surplus for the current financial year. “This surplus will be achieved within the service’s original funding budget without the need for additional ‘top-up’ funding,” he said. “Initial projections indicate the service will achieve a similar financial outcome for the 2024-25 financial year.” Following the release of the 202425 Budget earlier this month, Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas warned hospitals would not be provided extra funding if they exceeded their budg-
ets. Ms Thomas told The Age Victoria had more health services than the rest of Australia combined, and that almost a third of Victoria’s budget was spent on healthcare, and taxpayers expected that money to be spent appropriately. “The cost of local and agency staff has been increasing rapidly. And one of the reasons for that is we have 76 health services competing against one another for staff. Some health services are spending way too much on consultancies and PR,” she said. Continued page 3
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