When members of the Living Well Women group learned that St Helen’s Private Hospital in Hobart was closing next month, many cried.
Key points:
- St Helen’s Private Hospital in Hobart will close next month
- Owner Healthscope says it can not afford the repairs and upgrades the hospital needs to keep operating
- Psychiatrist Dr Marzena Rybak says she is worried about her patients and a system that is “at breaking point”
“It’s devastated all of us, many of us were in tears, we’re in shock, disbelief, at the fact that we’re having our safety net, our hospital taken away from us,” said group member Pip Swan.
“We’ve been running that group for 15 years now, in that same room, and to think that’s going to shut down is damaging all of us.”
“For some women in this group, the only thing they get to do is go to that group. They don’t leave their houses otherwise, and they’ve just lost their safety net altogether.”
The St Helen’s hospital has 31 general psychiatric inpatient beds and an eight-bed mother-baby unit, which is currently the only residential treatment facility for mothers struggling with mental health problems and babies with sleeping problems.
Owner Healthscope can not afford the repairs and upgrades the hospital needs to keep operating, saying the ageing facility and declining demand meant a multi-million-dollar investment was not viable.
Healthscope told patients, staff, and consulting doctors on Tuesday that the hospital would close in late June.
Ms Swan said many of the women in her group accessed treatments at the hospital including electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which are the only approved effective therapies for treatment-resistant depression.
“So many more people need to come in and use this service, and taking it away is going to have such a detrimental effect on a massive group of people in Hobart and Tasmania,” Ms Swan said.
“There’s no other private mental health facility like this [in Tasmania].”
‘No place’ to put patients
Psychiatrist Marzena Rybak was running the Living Well Women group on Tuesday and had to break the news of the closure to her patients.
She has operated out of consulting rooms at the hospital for about 20 years and has more than 2,000 patients.
She is unsure how she will be able to help patients who need in-patient treatment when she can no longer admit them to the St Helen’s Private Hospital.
“When they’re in crisis, when they require inpatient care, we have no place to put them in,” Dr Rybak said.
Tasmania’s only other private inpatient mental health beds are at the Hobart Clinic, in Rokeby, but Dr Rybak said it was a small facility that was usually at capacity.
Dr Rybak is also worried for her patients who need regular ECT and TMS sessions to manage their treatment-resistant depression.
“If we don’t have that, those people’s lives will be ruined. I don’t know what I’m going to do with them,” she said.
“As a doctor that’s my primary concern, and I don’t have answers.”
The St Helen’s Private Hospital has five TMS machines, the Hobart clinic has one and there is one at a private clinic in Bellerive. However, that service is only available to patients who have not had TMS treatment before, due to Medicare rules.
TMS is not available in the public system run by the Tasmanian Health Service.
ECT is also available at the Hobart Clinic and the Royal Hobart Hospital, but Dr Rybak said there were waiting lists for those.
Healthscope said there had been a 15 per cent decline in demand for in-patient services at the hospital, with about 24 of its 39 beds usually occupied.
It said in 2022, 134 patients attended day programs at the hospital, 28 patients received ECT and there were 122 TMS patients.
Dr Rybak disagreed that demand for mental health treatment services was falling.
“We are at breaking point right now and imagine cutting down 39 beds, plus all the outpatient services plus ECT plus TMS, it would be a total disaster for the whole state,” Dr Rybak said.
Healthscope said it would work with doctors and other health providers to transition its outpatient services to other providers and facilities.
The Tasmanian Health Service has already stepped in with plans to open its own mother-baby unit before the St Helen’s Private Hospital closes.
“The THS is also working with other non-government providers to ensure the health system is ready to meet any additional patient demand for in-hospital services,” Premier and Health Minister Jeremy Rockliff said on Tuesday.
“I would particularly like to recognise The Hobart Clinic for their early engagement in this planning process and their commitment to future service expansion.”