Wes Fang open to rural health department concept in future, but 'not right now'

Earlier this month Wagga MP Joe McGirr launched a petition calling for a department of rural health to be established by the state government, separate from the existing NSW Health framework.

The concept involves taking the bureaucracy out of Sydney, placing it in the regions and developing on-the-ground teams to address the unique issues facing rural healthcare, such as staffing shortages.

The department would also give the newly-appointed, first-ever Rural Health Minister Bronnie Taylor her own team to work alongside, Dr McGirr said.

Mr Fang believes Ms Taylor's role is so new that she needs the opportunity to first work with the existing department of health to achieve outcomes for regional and rural NSW before a separate department is considered.

"If we're able to deliver the outcomes with the current arrangements, that's going to be the best outcome for us all round," he said.

"If we were to initially just duplicate a department that would result in increased cost and complexity, but not necessarily have the increased patient outcomes that we would seek."

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One of Mr Fang's main concerns is the duplication of roles that could occur if there were two separate health departments, having two teams unknowingly working on the same issue at the same time.

He also argued that setting up a department of rural health would involve "extraordinarily huge" sums of money.

"We are talking hundreds of millions of dollars, I would expect, in order to develop a department of regional and rural health," Mr Fang said.

"Right now when the budget's in deficit as much as it is because of COVID [and floods, drought and bushfire] we need to make sure, more than ever, that each dollar goes further."

The MLC said that rather than spending the money on "backroom" bureaucracy, it should be put towards frontline services.

"We can't just create more doctors [and] nurses, all we're doing is creating more cost and complexity," he said.

"I'm not convinced that more background jobs are going to create more frontline doctors."

Despite this, Mr Fang doesn't disagree with the basis of the independent Member for Wagga's petition and said it is "not a wasted opportunity by any means".

"It's not a Joe versus Wes thing," he said.

"What [the petition] does, it says to everybody that has a stake in the process and in the outcome that this is a credible and serious proposition and it puts everybody on notice that if the outcomes aren't achieved, then it's the next step that we'll be looking at."

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