South West Healthcare looks to future after COVID challenges

The healthcare provider released its annual report on February 23 after several COVID-enforced delays, with chief executive officer Craig Fraser describing parts of the previous financial year as hugely challenging.

"We forget that 2021 was a year where COVID was still prevalent. We had a 10-day lockdown in July 2021, then peaks in August and September, then Omicron hit us in January 2022, which was an extremely difficult period," he said.

"We were still wearing full personal protective equipment (PPE) throughout that time, we had specific COVID beds, specialist COVID workflows, so it had a huge impact."

Mr Fraser cited PPE, which would include a gown, N95 mask, protective eyewear, hairnet, hand sanitiser and gloves, as a particularly onerous burden for often overworked staff.

"I think some people don't realise it took staff up to 10 minutes to put PPE on and up to another 10 minutes to take it off without contaminating themselves or anyone else, and some of our staff would have to do that 30 times a day," he said.

"I think for all the challenges we had 2021-22 was quite a successful year and moving forward we are hoping to get things back to normal."

SWH managed COVID-19 testing clinics throughout almost all of the 2021-22 year, as well as a vaccination clinic. The organisation conducted nearly 40,000 PCR tests and administered just under 67,000 vaccine doses, which contributed to the south-west's resilience through the pandemic, but sucked resources from normal hospital operations.

During the same period around 27,000 people came through the Warrnambool and Camperdown hospital emergency and urgent care departments, with 25,000 people admitted to hospital.

While that heavy demand, combined with recruitment challenges and staff furlough and burnout took its toll in areas like ED wait times, SWH shared resources with private hospitals like St John of God Warrnambool to push through an elective surgery backlog, performing more than 7000 surgeries over the year.

The organisation also squared away $39m from the state government for a 36-bed aged care facility in Camperdown, which Mr Fraser and his colleagues described as "a game changer" for the town.

The organisation essentially broke even on the budget ledger, but the slim result came on the back of continual growth and Mr Fraser trumpeted "record capital expenditure" including a $3m investment in new equipment and said he looked "forward to the next phase" for SWH.

He said staffing remained a crucial battle for the organisation, with medical support staff dwindling and some areas such as the ED and South West Medical Centre remaining understaffed.

In the ED 100 per cent of category 1 patients were seen within the recommended time frame, but that dropped to 61 per cent across all patients, with every second person waiting more than four hours and 10 people spending 24 hours in the ED.

At the same time, SWH was able to open several outpatient clinics, including an infant feeding clinic, a heart failure nurse clinic, a renal nurse clinic, an oncology clinic and an obstetric emotional health service. The organisation also started a geriatric service where a specialist doctor would visit elderly patients in their homes.