Facility to close

Kyneton District Health Service board president, Graham Jasper, and CEO, Jennifer Gale, this week announced the impending closure of the hospital's Thomas Hogan Aged Care wing.

Angela Crawford

Kyneton District Health Service has announced the impending closure of its Thomas Hogan Residential Aged Care wing.

The facility's 35 staff were notified on Wednesday morning, and the families of its 15 high-care residents were informed later that day.

It will cease operating as soon as July 1.

KDHS chief executive officer, Jennifer Gale, said the health service is hoping the move will free up about $150,000 operationally a year. These funds would enable the hospital to provide additional services aimed at keeping residents in their homes as long as possible, before they need to enter residential aged care.

"There will also be additional in-hospital services," she said.

"This change is part of an Australia-wide trend for public hospitals to move away from operating nursing homes to instead providing a range of services available to all elderly members of the community."

Ms Gale said that in recent years the facility had seen a steady decline in the number of residents, as people chose to stay at home for longer, or entered residential aged care at low-care stage, moving through to high care at the one facility. 

"At the same time there has been a growth in the number of beds provided locally by both private and not-for-profit operators, to the point where there is really no need for us to provide a nursing home," she said.

"We believe aged care is a service that we should provide to the whole community, and this will be a much better way for us to deliver that service.

"It is more rewarding for people to stay in their own homes, with appropriate support, for as long as possible, and we aim to ensure that is delivered in our region."

A daughter of one of the residents, however, pointed out that the hospital's idea to provide care that will enable more people to stay at home for longer, would actually mean that a higher number would end up going straight into high care.

"My mum doesn't want to move, she's settled in now," the daughter said. "She had the choice of going to three (facilities) and she picked Thomas Hogan because she knew people there and it was attached to the hospital.

"I think it's a shame that this well-equipped facility is not going to be utilised."

Ms Gale said the hospital will work closely with residents and families to enable a smooth transition of its residents to a new home.

"We've been discussing with them the future of our service for the last year, because we've been operating at 60 per cent occupancy with no waiting list (for the past three years)," she said.

"At 15 residents, it was approximately $50,000 a month that we were losing, about half a million a year at our current occupancy levels.

"Commonwealth and state subsidies still left a funding shortfall of about $250,000 a year, even when the facility was full."

Ms Gale said no determination has yet been made about the number of staff who will be made redundant. 

"That will be worked out with them individually over the next two weeks. At this stage, they all have positions until the 30th of June at least," she said. 

"Where we have vacancies within our service we'll look to redeploy them and we're talking to other facilities in our shire and within the Loddon Mallee to see where they may have vacancies so we'll be assisting the staff with transfers if that's what they want."

Kyneton Hospital's executive is currently undertaking a site masterplan which will determine how the Thomas Hogan wing will be used.