A rural Tasmanian emergency service has been temporarily halted due to staff shortages, sparking concern it will burden the region's ambulance resources and delay patient care.
The Rosebery Community Health Centre's emergency first response unit temporarily paused operations on February 15.
Hospitals and Primary Care deputy secretary Dale Webster attributed the closure to ongoing staffing and recruitment challenges, which had been exacerbated by unplanned staff absences.
Mr Webster said the Department of Health aimed to resume operations from March 13, depending on staffing.
The emergency first response unit is co-located with Ochre Medical Centre.
Practice manager Michelle Walker said the closure would not affect operations during business hours, with doctors able to respond to emergencies.
She said Category 1 and 2 patients – those requiring immediate care, or care within 10 minutes – were already directed to the West Coast District Hospital or North West District Hospital.
But she said the closure would affect patients requiring after hours and weekend emergency care.
Mr Webster advised patients requiring emergency care to call triple zero or go to the West Coast District Hospital.
Only a few cases to tie up ambulance services
Rural generalist doctor Dennis Pashen said a reduction in local services would mean patients would have to travel for simple emergency procedures.
And he said the region only needed a couple of emergency cases to tie up local ambulance services.
"If you've got a couple of severe cases that need to be evacuated out of the West Coast, it could mean that two or three of your ambulances are out of the district, and there could be a significant delay," he said.
"Major road trauma and mining accidents … they would eat all of your resources up in one situation, you'd have no reserves left to cope."
Professor Pashen said in urgent cases, such as a heart attack, emergency services would be flown out – but ambulances first needed to take patients to the airport at Strahan.
Drain on resources, long response times
Health and Community Services Union state secretary Tim Jacobson said the closure would put "significant pressure" on the north-west's already stretched ambulance services.
Mr Jacobson said ambulance staff was down 50 per cent on occasion, and the closure would likely result in more ambulances being sent down from Burnie.
"That will be a significant drain on Burnie's resources that will result in long response times in emergency circumstances, that's not a great situation" he said.
"For every minute longer that it takes to respond to a scene, obviously, there's a significantly greater risk to life in those circumstances."
He said the government needed to pay more to attract healthcare staff.
"The problem for the government is that they've let things get so bad that here we are, we're closing health services because we can't recruit staff," he said.
Department working to fill vacancies
The Department of Health did not respond when asked if the region's ambulance services had the staff and the resources to cope with a potential increase in demand.
It also did not respond when asked how many ambulances were available to the region.
Mr Webster said the community could be confident its emergency care needs would be met, with the Tasmanian Health Service North West, West Coast District Hospital, Ambulance Tasmania and Ochre Health working to ensure continued access.
He said data showed presentations to Rosebery emergency first response unit were minimal, with an average of 14 presentations a month, the majority of which were low acuity or non-urgent.
He said the department was working to fill nursing vacancies.
A government spokesperson said the 2021 state election commitment for the West Coast included an additional $560,000 for staffing.
They said it had enabled the West Coast District Hospital to employ a full time clinical nurse educator to support student nurses and new staff.
