MERCURY SAYS: Bulli reflects a system in poor health

It is not our most prominent hospital and it is certainly not our biggest.But Bulli Hospital has come to represent everything that’s wrong with our health system - chronically under-funded, under-resourced and for too long the subject of decisions based on politics instead of policy.As a consequence, the hospital’s emergency department has reached a critical junction and the ‘‘business-as-usual’’ approach for it and other smaller hospitals is no longer a viable or safe option.Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District Board members have quite rightly determined that, against a background of increasingly complex and expensive treatment options and changing demographics, resources must be adapted and consolidated.There are volumes of clinic evidence to support a new approach to the way our hospitals work but none more damning than the failures of the system.To their credit, both the board and NSW Health Minister Jillian Skinner have had the guts to admit what their predecessors knew but were never willing to concede.Now begins the monumental challenge in convincing a sceptical public of the case for change.