When the floods hit our city, Primary Healthcare providers were severely affected.

Pharmacies were completely destroyed so unable to provide critical medication supplies like insulin or heart meds. GPs were unable to perform simple procedures that could ensure early cancer detection which meant that patients amidst the despair, are now also facing far worse prognosis for their path to recovery due to later stage diagnosis. Hospital emergency department presentations increased due to a lack of available GPs or specialists to treat issues that would ordinarily be treated with a continuity of care, within their practice.

Vulnerable people, that is people with barriers to accessing care, have been affected drastically. They were simply not receiving care at all, many of which 10 months on, still have not attended simple appointments if these practices were back up and running. 

Then add the extra impacts of floods on the health and well-being of people in the community which naturally increases the need for services, creating even more strain on services battling to run out of rooms or practices which have been thrown back together without adequate standards or facilities required to service the community.

"We have already lost some medical practitioners. Losing a rural GP is like losing a foundational brick from the very basis of our community, as replacing them, is a very difficult task," says the Centre for Rural Health.

Dr Ken Gudmundsen has been the driver of this campaign since losing his rooms at the Lismore Skin Clinic on Molesworth Street on February 28 2022. It was months of having to practice out of St Vincent's consulting rooms at half the capacity with his fully equipped, well-staffed, 9-room specialist clinic.

Dr Ken Gudmundsen of Lismore Skin Clinic says “it’s a death spiral once we start to lose the practitioners because the chances are, we won’t get them back, and services are so strained already, the flow on effects are massive and will be felt for years to come, causing much more strain on other areas, such as social and community services, hospitals and the general function of our community”.

These same healthcare providers have called on the Federal and State Governments for funding support, outside the same grants given to every business, which don’t adequately cover the restoration of their practices to be able to service the community to pre-flood standards. 

After months of no response to their call, the Australian Medical Association and Rural Doctors joined the Lismore practitioners to hold an emergency summit. Following on from that summit, Janelle Saffin Lismore State MP drafted some strong letters, which were later co-signed by Federal MP for Page Kevin Hogan and submitted urging the consideration for an additional $15 million in funding to be given to the Primary Healthcare providers.

Ms Saffin also asked the question formerly of the State Parliament in the final sittings of 2022 and was quietly confident that the matters were under serious consideration when the Lismore App spoke with her over the Xmas break.

In addition to the funding, AMA and practitioners are asking for Primary Healthcare Providers to be considered among essential service provisions in all future declared National Emergencies to ensure funding such as this proposed $15 million, is provided early and adequately to decrease the ever-widening flow on effects that we have experienced in the Lismore and surrounding communities.

Dr Gudmundsen says, in regards to the Lismore Skin Clinic, the effects of not being adequately funded and having to work from rented rooms has been as follows:

"We are working at less capacity due to having fewer rooms, and with fewer nursing staff able to be employed, due to still being unable to return to our original premises."

"There is no known finish date to repair the rooms in Molesworth House, due to challenges with costs and contractors etc. So we have set up smaller rooms at St Vincent’s Hospital Lismore to get up and running to be able to continue treatment for patients"

"Previously at the larger Premises, we had 4 Consulting Rooms, 3 Procedure Rooms and one phototherapy room so 8 rooms. Currently, at the smaller Suite at St Vincent’s Hospital, we have 1 Consult Room and 1 Procedure Room, and only recently have been able to gain access to one more small consult room, this means far less service provision for the community, along with a major challenge to retain staff with no end date to get back to normal hours and capacity of operation.

The figures speak for themselves. Lismore Skin Clinic's number of patients seen from March to the end of May 2022 is 0. Approximately 1,900 appointments were missed, which meant no service to the community during the 3-month closure.

From June to December 2021, there were 3,941 appointments compared with June to December 2022 when there were 2,636, which is 1,305 fewer patients seen and decreased level of service provision to the community.

As with other specialists, Ken is hearing of more and more patients presenting with far later stage diagnosis and worse outcomes than ever before in our local hospitals, this brings great distress to a doctor like Ken, and the practitioners such as Dr Sue Velovsky, Dr Nina Robertson and Pharmacist Kyle Woods whose heart is in the service to our local community, the community they too reside in.