It is extremely disappointing that I need to respond to recent comments and an article in your paper “Pressure Rises” relating to Gunnedah Rural Health Centre and Gunnedah Hospital as many of these points were raised in an interview of more than 50 minutes with the author of the article, it is a disappointment she chose not to use them.

I also note she once again predominantly relies on “unnamed” sources. 

The article and recent comments relating to Gunnedah Hospital would have residents of Gunnedah believe that every other doctor in Gunnedah has and continues to participate at the hospital and doctors from Gunnedah Rural Health do not or are unwilling to work at the hospital, and the problem lies with GRH – nothing could be further from the truth.

After careful inspection of the on-call roster over this year and last year it is evident that not all doctors from other practices participate as “first on-call doctors”, some others have appeared infrequently yet all of those doctors are permitted to admit and see their patients in hospital, yet hospital management has denied our doctors that right, despite many attempts by GRH to rectify this.

Gunnedah Rural Health has put forward suggestions to Gunnedah Hospital management to ease the burden on the emergency department and also to allow GRH doctors access to their patients in hospital, however we are yet to see any real progress.

It is only of recent times GRH does not have one of its doctors on the emergency roster. 

Late last year we had three doctors on the roster.  Dr Mo has taken leave from GRH to care for unwell family members which also means she is unable to be on the hospital roster.  The other two doctors have both resigned due to issues with Gunnedah Hospital management.

One of those doctors has done more weekend on-call work than any other individual doctor in Gunnedah in recent times.

The letter your author refers to can only be described as completely inaccurate, hypercritical and insulting.  It was not sent to doctors at GRH in December as claimed but delivered to the board at GRH by Gunnedah Hospital management in February.

This letter does nothing to foster good-will or a positive working relationship, in fact, it displays an arrogance and bullying nature by other doctors in Gunnedah which is shameful.

It is also important to remember that GRH was established to overcome a severe shortage of doctors and other health professionals in Gunnedah.

By any measure, GRH has and will continue to be a huge success. We now have more doctors in Gunnedah, we have allied health professionals providing services from GRH such as imaging/ultrasound, dietician, psychologist, hearing and sleep clinics. The centre has visiting specialists such as two surgeons a haematologist, psychiatrist and we are currently in discussions with paediatricians to bring a much-needed service to Gunnedah.

It is a shame doctors from other practices in Gunnedah don’t refer their patients to GRH and therefore avoid the need for unnecessary travel.

We continue to attract new doctors. Dr Arash has recently started with GRH committing to a long-term contract.

There are also two more doctors looking to join the team. This will mean we will be well and truly able to look after the health needs of Gunnedah and surrounding districts and with our allied health and visiting specialists, our aim is to save people having to travel to major centres for these services.

We hope that hospital management will carefully consider our suggestions to ensure we have a system that will be fair to all doctors.

In the meantime, we will continue to improve on the services we provide and continue to invest in better health facilities and services for Gunnedah.