Jayme-Lee Russell was left confused and frustrated after her two-year-old daughter was sent home from an Urgent Care Centre (UCC) with antibiotics for a suspected spider bite in February.
"We never even got to speak or be seen by a doctor and my daughter's condition was rapidly changing," she said.
"It just feels like if you are sick, you've got nowhere to go."
As a lifelong resident of the regional Victorian town of Stawell, Ms Russell is concerned with the lack of healthcare facilities in the town.
She said the closest hospital, Ararat hospital, was a half an hour to drive from Stawell.
"Everybody seems to feel like we've got nowhere to go and we're just getting sent home to struggle," she said.
Stawell Regional Health, and four other western Victorian hospitals, merged with Grampians Health in 2021.
But Ms Russell said residents in the local community were still not getting the care they needed.
"At the moment, we can't even get a GP appointment," she said.
She initially supported the idea of the merger, but was disappointed with the outcome.
"It's just all of a sudden the wheels are falling off and doctors are leaving Stawell and nobody wants to help out our small community anymore," Ms Russell said.
Residents lodge complaints
Ms Russell has written to the Victorian Health Complaints Commissioner as well as Grampians Health Stawell.
Another Stawell resident, Rachael Bird, has also submitted a complaint to the board of Grampians Health.
Ms Bird has three chronic conditions that require regular medical care.
She said she arrived home from Thailand late last year and needed urgent care in Stawell.
"There was nothing that they could do for me," she said.
"Then I went to Ararat hospital and I was hospitalised that morning for seven days with double pneumonia."
Ms Bird believed the care she received before the merger was better.
"I had an amazing doctor I saw at Stawell Medical Centre, and he was working with me and all my specialists brilliantly well," she said.
"Anytime I needed an appointment, I could get one."
Ms Bird said she might be compelled to relocate if the situation did not improve.
"You got to weigh up whether you can still live [here] with this sort of healthcare," she said.
Hospital using temporary doctors
Earlier this year Stawell lost three of its general practitioners, which equated to half of the town's doctors.
Grampians Health chief executive officer Dale Fraser said the hospital was facing recruitment challenges.
"We are utilising locum GPs while we are actively recruiting to fill our GP positions," he said.
"We are actively recruiting through all channels available to us and are also looking to introduce alternative models of care, such as nurse-led initiatives and allied health input, to complement the care provided by GPs.
"Locum doctors fill roles for a time or temporarily take the place of another."
The UCC also uses My Emergency Doctor, which is a telemedicine services staffed by specialist virtual doctors.
"If any of the patients presenting to our UCC are critically ill or if we receive many critically ill patients at once, we might transfer them out to another facility so that they can continue receiving life-saving care," Mr Fraser said.
He said Grampians Health Stawell had also eliminated out-of-pocket fees for Stawell residents needing urgent care.
