Lack of accessibility putting Qympie residents at risk
Residents of Queensland town Gympie are paying the price for an ageing, under performing health system. Experts say a lack of accessibility to healthcare is putting residents at risk and reducing their life expectancy.
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00:00 Brian Brown spends seven hours a day caring for his wife Charmaine at her Gympie nursing
00:07 home.
00:08 She can't communicate and she has to be supervised having her meals because of the stroke.
00:15 He's also undergoing his own treatment for leukaemia.
00:19 But like hundreds of other Gympie residents, Mr Brown is forced to leave the region regularly
00:24 to access health care.
00:26 The health system in this area, people aren't looked after.
00:29 A local health service plan has revealed not enough people are being treated at the Gympie
00:34 hospital and that the age of the facility creates significant clinical challenges.
00:40 Health business analysts say limited access to GPs is putting further pressure on the
00:45 hospital with patients at grave risk.
00:48 Just by living in a post-coded Gympie, you have less life expectancy than the average
00:55 Australian.
00:56 GPs say they're spending a lot of valuable time helping vulnerable patients with logistics
01:01 and travel claims just to get treatment.
01:05 I would say 90% of patients who I refer for some kind of scope like this are not treated
01:12 in the community.
01:13 Instead, they're treated at hospitals on the Sunshine Coast, about an hour's drive away.
01:18 A Queensland health spokesperson insists the Gympie hospital is a priority, confirming
01:23 it will soon build staff accommodation, but at this stage no other funding has been allocated
01:30 for further redevelopments.
01:32 Two years ago, a medical transport service set up in the area.
01:35 Since then, demand has quadrupled.
01:38 That's just going to keep on increasing because of the lack of services that we have here
01:44 in our local district and because there's no public transport to get people down to
01:50 the coast.
01:51 Those who regularly make the trek for health care say they've been abandoned.
01:56 The population here is growing and they just seem to be left behind.
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