DIMBOOLA District Hospital has cut the number of acute care beds from four to two, replacing them with aged care beds.
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Wimmera Health Care Group chief executive Chris Scott said the changes were a response to the needs of the community.
“We’re very well positioned with aged care bed licences which allows us to be flexible in the use of our beds to best meet the needs of the community,” he said.
“At present there’s less demand for acute beds and increased demand for aged care beds.
“Our staff have got a broad range of skills and extensive proficiency.
“We’re simply meeting the needs of the community.”
Mr Scott said he did not believe lower numbers of acute care beds would restrict the hospital’s ability to recruit doctors in the future.
“There’s still acute beds and there’s still access to those beds,” he said.
“Over the past 12 months the utilisation of those acute beds has been 1.8 beds, so we’ve used less than two beds on average.”
Mr Scott said the situation would be reassessed if demand for acute beds changed.