Community campaign saves Masada services
A PROPOSAL to convert Masada Private Hospital in Balaclava to a maternity facility and oust around 20 doctors specialising in other medical services has been dropped, after The AJN publicised the move.
PETER KOHN
A PROPOSAL to convert Masada Private Hospital in Melbourne to a maternity facility and oust around 20 doctors specialising in other medical services has been dropped, after The AJN publicised the move.
The bid to end Masada’s unofficial role as a major general hospital for the local Jewish community has been scrapped, after an emergency meeting this week between senior executives of the hospital’s owners, Ramsay Health Care, and around 20 doctors, calling themselves the Save Masada Group.
Ear, nose and throat specialist Dr Michael Gordon, who has been at Masada for 15 years, said The AJN story on August 28 “played a major role in bringing about a resolution”.
A copy of that week’s paper was spotted in the CEO’s office, and Masada executives were becoming increasingly concerned at the impact the changes would¬† have on Jewish patients and their families.
The crisis was sparked when a group of obstetricians and anaesthetists at Masada proposed to Ramsay that the hospital be converted into a maternity facility using rostered obstetricians, based on a Queensland model.
Services that would have been lost to the local community included general surgery, haematology, orthopaedics, paediatrics, respiratory, ear, nose and throat, and dermatology.
A Jewish community campaign gathered pace, with Mizrachi’s Rabbi Yaacov Sprung calling for the changes to be scrapped in a Shabbat sermon. The rabbi later phoned Masada CEO Petra Snelleman and Ramsay’s Victorian senior operations manager Bronte Kumm, asking for the proposal to be urgently reviewed.
Dr Simon Braham, who led the Save Masada Group, described the result as “a win for everyone – the doctors, the hospital and our patients. I want to give credit to Ramsay for hearing our concerns, and to The AJN for alerting our patients to what could have been a serious problem”.
A spokesperson for Ramsay Health Care confirmed that the group is likely to expand and redevelop its maternity facility but that existing services will now not be moved to other hospitals in the Ramsay group. The revised plan will involve a major capital investment in redeveloping Masada.
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