05/06/2026
Our article published in the Mercury Newspaper today:
Why the Tasmanian Health System is failing - and it’s not cheese toasties at 1.30am or staffroom biscuits
Recently, at the North West Regional Hospital, theatre staff finished operating at 1.30am. Tired and hungry, they went to make a cheese toastie only to find a sign on the fridge: “Cheese is no longer being supplied by the kitchen”.
That is what cuts look like on the hospital floor. No big announcement. No service closure. Just staff finishing a late case and finding one more sign that their effort matters less than a budget line.
It is easy to dismiss this as trivial. It is not.
When staff are operating until 1.30am, this is not about perks. It is about whether they are treated with basic decency.
The same goes for the disappearance of biscuits in staff rooms at the RHH. No one is asking for luxuries. These small things tell pressured staff: we see you, and we value what you do. Thankfully the NWRH management have seen the error of their ways and the cheese toastie is back.
Tasmania’s health system has to find $700 million in savings over four years. The Government calls that operational efficiency. Fine — every big system should cut waste. But in health, “efficiency” too often means frontline staff paying for decisions made elsewhere.
That is a false economy. Strip away every courtesy and morale drops. People leave. Sick leave goes up. Locum bills climb. Culture gets worse. The system ends up less efficient, not more.
That is why the Minister was right to step in when RHH staff were told they could no longer wear colourful scrubs. It was a tone-deaf decision — the kind that might look minor in an office but feels insulting on a hospital ward.
Tasmania does not need more penny-pinching. It needs governments willing to make the big calls they have avoided for years.
In the North West, that means ending the fantasy that two ageing hospital sites can keep doing the job of one proper modern hospital. The region needs a single facility that is planned properly, staffed properly and built to last.
The current model wastes money, duplicates services, stretches the workforce and leaves clinicians delivering care in buildings past their use-by date. In maternity, reliance on private theatres because of space constraints has created legal concern for clinicians and contributed to the loss of the only obstetrician working across both sectors.
The same is true in the South. The RHH is Tasmania’s tertiary hospital, yet its infrastructure planning has become a story of delay and half-measures. In a decade, one tower has been built when there should have been two, and now an emergency department is being spread over three floors — locking in inefficiency for years.
Staff are over it. They are tired of working on a constant construction site and of years of planning and disruption that still do not deliver the capacity they need, with bed block now an everyday reality.
There has been no shortage of plans in recent years. The problem is that staff cannot see them translating into better care. If patients cannot feel the difference and budgets do not back delivery, then the plan is just paper.
We need a new Health Plan, one that is properly consulted with and owned by all healthcare workers and the public. It must start with need and demand. What services will Tasmanians need over the next decade? Where will that demand occur? What can be delivered safely closer to home through general practice, community health, Hospital in the Home and telehealth, and what must be concentrated because of safety, complexity or workforce limits?
These are politically difficult questions. Can every community have a CT scanner? Will regional Tasmanians need to travel for treatment? What services should be prioritised when funding is tight?
If cancer services are a priority, pathology and radiology cannot remain underfunded and understaffed. These services catch cancer early, prevent delays and save lives.
Nor should the Cancer Trials Unit be cut back, limiting access to emerging treatments and giving specialists fewer reasons to build careers in Tasmania.
We need the Bluegum digital health record project to be delivered ‘tomorrow’ and integrated with general practice. A modern health system cannot run on fragmented records and poor information sharing.
Of course, waste should be cut and duplication removed. But the real waste is not a slice of cheese at 1.30am. It is the inefficiency built into hospitals, the underfunding of diagnostics, the delay to digital reform and the constant sidelining of clinical judgement.
It is the time clinicians are spending on activities that do not improve patient care. More than 20 hours of mandatory training for THS staff is estimated to cost over $30 million a year. Is this justified by clear evidence, necessity and outcomes? The same scrutiny should apply to layers of governance, infection control and quality processes that may be well-intended but add delay and draw time away from patients.
Let’s not forget the more than 100 patients stuck in acute beds because the pathways out of hospital are not properly funded. Real efficiency means funding step-down care, putting operational authority back in hospitals, aligning non-clinical roles with clear purpose, and training the workforce Tasmania needs. Above all, it means listening to clinicians, who have warned for years that the system is breaking.
This budget will show whether the Government is serious about rebuilding the health system or content to keep shaving around the edges while the bigger problems grow.
Michael Lumsden-Steel
President AMA Tasmania
