Peter Gutwein,Premier
Sarah Courtney,Minister for Health
The North West Regional Hospital (NWRH) and the North West Private Hospital (NWPH) will close for 14-days from tomorrow as part of a five-stage plan to secure health services in the region.
In addition, North West Regional/North West Private Hospital staff and their households will be required to undertake 14 days of isolation quarantine from their last shift.
The North-West COVID-19 outbreak has presented significant challenges, and we have been working night and day to ensure essential care is continuing to be provided for North-West Tasmanians.
We have already seen unprecedented measures to date, aimed at containing this outbreak, including diverting ambulance services, closing wards to new admissions, and quarantining staff and their households.
On the advice of Public Health Services and key clinical leaders, we are now taking the next step to ensure that we can get on top of this.
From tomorrow, we will commence a plan to contain this outbreak and reopen services at the North West Regional Hospital and North West Private as soon as possible.
- All staff from NWRH and NWP, and their households, to be quarantined for 14 days from their last shift;
- Close the NWRH and NWP sites from tomorrow at 7am;
- Conduct a comprehensive deep clean across both sites;
- Maintain support for emergency care in the region, including additional aeromedical support and working closely with general practice;
- Progressive restart of service, starting with:
- ED after 72 hours
- Maternity
- Cancer
- ICU/Paediatrics
In order to retain as much hospital capacity as possible, we are expanding and bringing staff into the Mersey Community Hospital to allow existing patients from the NWRH and NWP to be transferred to the Mersey. These patients will only be transferred out of the North-West if their clinical condition requires it.
Patient and staff safety is our number one priority, with any transported patients to be treated with the full precautions – as if they have coronavirus – and they will be geographically isolated within the hospitals.
We will work to minimise the time that the Emergency Department is closed, and will be putting in place support for urgent care and unexpected emergencies, bolstering ambulance capacity in the North-West to ensure patients who need care will get it, as well as working closely with local GPs to deliver more primary care capacity wherever possible. We will advise the community as services are able to be recommenced.
This has been an extremely difficult decision to make, and has involved complex clinical planning, but it is based on the best advice from our local experts.
The protection of our health workers and health facilities must remain our number one priority.
We know these decisions will directly affect our hardworking, highly skilled staff and their families and households, and we want to assure them that we are only taking these measures because we absolutely believe they are necessary to control the coronavirus outbreak in the North-West.
In combination with the Stage 4 Restrictions, which we are implementing in the North-West, we believe this plan gives us the best chance at smothering this outbreak.
