A Shepparton MP wants the state government to send teams of healthcare workers from Melbourne to regional hospitals as they face massive staff shortages and increasing demand for services.
Member for Shepparton Suzanna Sheed said hospitals in Albury-Wodonga, Wangaratta, and Shepparton were struggling with the level of illness in the community.
This week Albury-Wodonga Health declared a code yellow for the third time this year.
Ms Sheed was calling on the government to send a surge medical workforce to regional hospitals immediately to relieve the pressure.
"It's widely known that we have a real reluctance among professionals to be moving to regional areas and that is an ongoing problem that needs to be addressed in the bigger picture, but right now in the short term there's this desperate need for more capacity in our regional hospitals," she said.
She said regional health services were seeing people needing to stay in hospital for longer and hundreds of staff needing to be furloughed because they have become sick themselves.
Ms Sheed said health workers had told her they were exhausted and burnt out.
The government recently announced incentive payments of $3,000 for all staff working in public hospitals and ambulance services.
But Ms Sheed said this was "not cutting it" when there continued to be code yellows declared at regional hospitals.
"But our greatest challenge is to try to find people and what we need right now is qualified people coming in and assisting in our emergency departments."
Presentations and staffing number pressures
Albury-Wodonga Health interim chief executive Janet Chapman said the latest code yellow was prompted by increasing demand at the local hospitals but also what they called "increasing acuity".
She said that meant people coming to see the local hospitals were very unwell.
"It makes it very difficult for us to get the turnover we need."
Ms Chapman said they were seeing increasing levels of COVID, flu, and other respiratory diseases present to the hospitals, with about 200 presentations a day to local emergency departments.
She said a number of staff members had also been furloughed after picking up COVID.
Ms Chapman said the current furloughed numbers were in the 20s but more information was needed around other illnesses picked up by staff.
"We have been collecting data on COVID furlough for some time," she said.
"We're going to really need to change our system to look at influenza furlough as well."
