An opportunity to be world class squandered
26 August 2006
There seems little community interest in the hospital location decision, announced last week, if we take the letters to the editor of the 'Daily' as a barometer.
Yet the enormity of the decision, and the financial and other benefits that have been forfeited are going to become increasingly evident across the Coast in the decades ahead.
The long-term quality of health provision seems to have been marginalised relative to activity centre competition, transport corridors, and easily purchased and developed land. There is no mention of the 'Forster Report' findings on the health crisis, the views of senior clinicians, researchers, or even the Queensland Health consultants’ report and the site selection criteria.
The people who have actual experience of the power of collocation have been ignored. Take the views of an independent visitor to the University for example. Professor Ian Frazer, the current Australian of the Year, and cancer researcher. He said to me last week that collocation was essential to attract and retain staff of the highest international calibre, and with them come the major grants to provide research insights into clinical practice.
Research and teaching driven hospitals collocated with universities are worldwide emerging as the powerhouses of the medical and health professions. Of the top 15 universities in the United States, 10 are university hospitals, and the trend is accelerating.
Our local Minister said last year that collocation was “Smart State thinking at its best,” and just over a month ago the Premier reflected and extolled world’s best practice when reconfirming the establishment of Griffith University Hospital on the Gold Coast. If that is Smart State philosophy, why is the Sunshine Coast denied its rights to aspire to be world class?
The future scenario of a growing USC, a new high-tech job generating precinct, a new high level ‘village’ at Sippy Downs, and the hospital operating together could have elevated this ‘knowledge hub’ to that of world class status.
There are many other advantages that could also have flowed - sharing staff, facilities, bandwidth provision - the list goes on.
Instead, we have to work at a distance from the hospital and while we will be successful, the synergies are correspondingly reduced and the quality of health provision and the complexity of the relationship will also be reduced, to the disadvantage of the whole Coast.
The politics, local and State, have severely compromised this decision, and monitoring the Griffith University Hospital over the decades ahead will be an illuminating and sobering experience.
Professor Paul Thomas is Vice-Chancellor of University of the Sunshine Coast