The only specialist facility servicing a huge rural catchment is shutting up shop, leaving few options for locals.
A $9 million private mental health facility in Queensland’s largest regional town has been placed into external voluntary administration just four years after opening.
The Toowoomba Clinic, a 27-bed adult mental health clinic, began taking in patients in September 2020 and was the only specialist facility servicing a rural catchment area of over 500km2.
According to an anonymous staff member, quoted by local media outlet the Toowoomba Chronicle, the closure had been coming for some time.
“We did not expect it to happen this soon,” the employee was reported to say. “There’s only three or four patients there now and they are leaving this weekend.”
Brisbane-based administrators SV Partners said, “changes in psychiatrists’ work patterns caused by covid made it difficult to attract psychiatrists willing to admit patients”, according to the Chronicle.
“After 10 years of work by shareholders it was a difficult decision for the directors to make as they were committed to improving access to mental health services for people in our region,” said SV Partners director Anne Meagher.
The Toowoomba Clinic ceased trading on Sunday 5 May. A meeting of creditors was scheduled for today.
There was better news across town with work starting on the new $1.3 billion Toowoomba hospital being built on the site of the Baillie Henderson Hospital mental health facility on the northern outskirts of the town.
Two hours’ drive west of Brisbane, the current Toowoomba Base Hospital services a huge rural catchment area and is the gateway to transporting critical patients from the bush to tertiary hospitals in Brisbane.
The new hospital will deliver additional emergency treatment spaces, including medical imaging, pharmacy and pathology services, as well as administration, education and training facilities for hospital staff.
Updated concept renders of the planned hospital show what the project might look like, with further detailed design to be completed in the coming months.
The construction of the hospital is estimated to support more than 3000 local construction jobs. Completion is expected in the second half of 2027.
Also opened this week was a new $42 million Bunya Day Surgery centre which includes two new theatres providing capacity for an additional 4000 surgeries annually, according to Queensland Health.
Talking at the Australian College of Midwives national conference in Toowoomba recently, Queensland Minister for Health Shannon Fentiman admitted that it could be “several years” before the state’s much-touted public home birthing rollout reached the regional centre.
The first babies born at home through the public sector will come on the Sunshine Coast in July of this year, but Ms Fentiman was quick to downplay any attempt to fast-track rolling the scheme out in other areas.
“I’m looking forward to seeing that evaluation and expanding it to places across Toowoomba,” she told the media at the conference.
“Women have told me time and time again, they want three things – they want continuity of care, they want choice and they want it close to home.
“I’m a big fan of making sure we have a publicly funded home birthing service, and I’m confident we will see that service expand (over several years).”