{"id":1915,"date":"2019-03-15T22:58:24","date_gmt":"2019-03-15T22:58:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/?p=1915"},"modified":"2019-03-15T22:58:24","modified_gmt":"2019-03-15T22:58:24","slug":"nsw-labor-to-deliver-203-million-upgrade-to-coffs-harbour-hospital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/2019\/03\/15\/nsw-labor-to-deliver-203-million-upgrade-to-coffs-harbour-hospital\/","title":{"rendered":"NSW Labor to deliver $203 million upgrade to Coffs Harbour Hospital"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A Daley Labor Government will deliver an additional $9 million to Coffs Harbour hospital \u2013 bringing the total investment into the facility to $203 million \u2013 as part of the Schools and Hospitals before Stadiums\u2019 plan.<br \/>\nThe additional Labor funding for Coffs Harbour hospital will go towards:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Replacement of the dental X-ray machine, which has been broken for at least six months \u2013 forcing patients to go \u201cprivate\u201d; and<\/li>\n<li>Funding to deliver additional parking spaces to off-set the expected loss of 110 parking spaces under the current plan.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The overall improvements \u2013 costing $194 million &#8211; include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Expansion of the existing surgical and operating theatres;<\/li>\n<li>New theatres;<\/li>\n<li>A new short stay surgical unit;<\/li>\n<li>Orthopaedic and vascular unit;<\/li>\n<li>Ambulatory care area; and<\/li>\n<li>The expansion of community health.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The region has experienced substantial population growth over the last eight years and the needs of the hospital have been neglected.<br \/>\nNSW Labor leader Michael Daley made the announcement with Country Labor candidate for Coffs Harbour Tony Judge.<br \/>\nThe Coffs Harbour announcement follows NSW Labor&#8217;s commitment to employ 5,500 more nurses and midwives; 1,500 more paramedics; 2,240 more cleaning, support personnel and allied health workers; and 250 more security staff to protect patients and health workers.<br \/>\nIn an earlier announcement, NSW Labor committed to capping hospital parking fees for health workers at $10 per week \u2013 subject to current contracts ending.<br \/>\nCoffs Harbour hospital is under enormous pressure with its emergency department seeing about 40,000 patients a year.\u00a0 About one in five (21.9 per cent) of patients waited longer than four hours. Ten per cent of patients waited longer than seven hours and 48 minutes.<br \/>\nAs of December 31, there are 1,797 patients waiting for elective surgery at Coffs Harbour hospital with the median wait for non-urgent elective surgery is 240 days with 10 per cent of patients waiting longer than 348 days.<br \/>\nIn addition, in 2018, there were 1,058 babies born at Coffs Harbour hospital.<br \/>\nBuilt in 2001 under then Labor Premier Bob Carr and Dr Andrew Refshauge, it is a major referral hospital for the Coffs Network of the Mid North Coast Local Health District.<br \/>\nWith 292 beds, its services include general medicine, surgery, day surgery, planned and emergency theatre service, coronary care (including coronary angiography unit), intensive care, obstetrics, paediatrics, 24-hour Emergency Department, oncology, palliative care, rehabilitation, stroke, acute renal dialysis, high dependency and mental health and an extensive range of outpatient clinics.<br \/>\nCountry Labor candidate for Coffs Harbour Tony Judge said: \u201cThe mid-North Coast has been neglected by the National Party and taken for granted.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cUnfortunately, the National Party have the wrong priorities. They want to splurge $2.2 billion on stadiums and refuse to listen to the community on their health and hospital needs \u2013 while NSW Labor will invest in health and hospital services.<br \/>\n\u201cCoffs Harbour deserves world-class health and hospital services in their local community.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Daley Labor Government will deliver an additional $9 million to Coffs Harbour hospital \u2013 bringing the total investment into the facility to $203 million \u2013 as part of the Schools and Hospitals before Stadiums\u2019 plan. The additional Labor funding for Coffs Harbour hospital will go towards: Replacement of the dental X-ray machine, which has &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/2019\/03\/15\/nsw-labor-to-deliver-203-million-upgrade-to-coffs-harbour-hospital\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;NSW Labor to deliver $203 million upgrade to Coffs Harbour Hospital&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1915\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}