2 days ago
Patients call on Queensland government to step in and save embattled Toowong Private Hospital
The Queensland government is facing desperate pleas to make an 11th-hour bid to save Toowong Private Hospital, with patients describing the mental health facility as life-changing.
Eliza Johnston, 34, said the hospital had saved her life "on numerous occasions".
"Without it, there's nowhere else to go — the public system just doesn't cover it," she said.
"The public system will discharge you unless you're a danger to somebody else. Under the public system I was going to die, and this hospital saved me.
"I think anything should be done to save the beds."
The former Toowong Private patient was among about 40 people who stood outside the 58-bed hospital on Monday afternoon to protest its impending closure.
Another patient, who gave his name as Ryan, said he had been going to the facility for 25 years.
"I just don't want to see this hospital close down, because there's so many loving and caring people that look after us," he said.
Asked to give a message to the Queensland government about the closure, he said: "You can't close down the hospital."
"Too many people need the care and support, and they've got nowhere else to go. It's just a horrible situation for everyone," he said.
The Queensland Greens MP for the Brisbane-based seat of Maiwar, Michael Berkman, also attended the rally, repeating impassioned calls for the Crisafulli government to step in and buy the hospital — which would have turned 50 next year.
"We have a mental health crisis here in Queensland and across the country," Mr Berkman said.
"The last thing we can afford to see is these kinds of acute mental health beds being lost to the system.
"We need to be building the state's capacity."
Mr Berkman said he had been "astounded" by the number of people who had contacted his office to express dismay at the collapse of Toowong Private, which is expected to close its doors for the last time later this week.
"It seems like just about everyone in this community knows someone or has some connection with a patient in the hospital previously," he said.
Psychiatrist Brett Emmerson, Queensland branch chair of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, said the sunshine state was about 300 to 350 mental health beds short of what it needed.
"Access is getting worse," he said.
"It's dire. We're in trouble. They don't ever seem to find enough money for mental health."
At the same time, Professor Emmerson said psychiatry was experiencing "a workforce crisis".
"We actually are not graduating enough people to fill the needs now and into the future," he said.
"There was a survey of private practitioners — a lot of them are burnt out, and a lot of them are overwhelmed with work."
Professor James Scott, the medical superintendent of Ramsay Health's New Farm psychiatric clinic in Brisbane's inner north, said it was becoming increasingly hard to recruit psychiatrists willing to admit patients into private hospitals.
"Most psychiatrists have outpatient practices," he said.
"The psychiatrists who are treating patients in hospital, they're getting paid sometimes as little as a third of what they'd earn if they were looking after outpatients … for looking after much more complex people.
"It's not a sustainable workforce model."
Professor Scott called for more public-private partnerships in mental health to increase capacity.
He said Toowong Private Hospital had "some of the best psychiatrists in Australia" practising there.
"They were providing excellent care, and the state government could have utilised some of that facility to take the burden off," Professor Scott said.
A spokesperson for Queensland Health Minister Tim Nicholls said his department continued to work with Toowong Private to determine what impact its closure may have on public mental health services, and to "support continuity of care, if required".
"Queensland Health understands that all inpatients at Toowong hospital will be transferred to other private mental health facilities in Brisbane," the spokesperson said.
Last week, the minister told ABC Radio Brisbane that Toowong Private tended to treat "lower acuity patients", a statement that was condemned by the protesters.
"It was terribly disappointing to hear Tim Nicholls's comment that patients that come to Toowong Private Hospital are not acutely unwell. It's just not true," Eliza Johnston said.
"I'm a former patient, and the patients here are as unwell as they get.
