Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith and Dr Romil Jain in one of the new theatres at the ACT Day Hospital. Photos: Ian Bushnell.
A new private hospital specialising in day surgery and other procedures has opened in Deakin, boosting services and integrated health care in the Canberra region.
Established by the team behind the ACT Pain Clinic, the ACT Day Hospital will augment a suite of health services including the Pain Clinic, Canberra Child Psychiatry Centre and the ACT Specialist Centre for specialists in other disciplines such as renal, oncology, gynaecology, psychiatry, haematology, rheumatology, general surgery and neurosurgery.
Rounding out the multidisciplinary site are allied health professionals including physiotherapists, psychologists, an occupational therapist, and a dietician.
The new hospital features two cutting-edge operating theatres, including a floor-mounted angiography suite dedicated to advanced interventional pain management services.
The angiography suite means patients can undergo procedures that are normally not feasible in a day hospital, such as suitable cardiovascular procedures.
Until now these procedures would be undertaken at National Capital and Calvary Private and both these facilities are at capacity for such procedures. This enables more cost-effective solutions to most day surgeries being performed in Canberra.
At an opening ceremony on Friday, team leader and Pain Clinic founder Dr Romil Jain, a specialist pain medicine physician and interventional pain specialist, said the hospital had about 80 staff but that would increase to about 100 in the coming months.
Dr Jain said facial surgeon Dr Michael Cooper had already started this week, and the hospital would be expanding into gynecology, ophthalmology and neurological services.
He said the new hospital was designed to deliver timely, efficient and affordable surgical services to the community.
It was expected to perform, on average, 40 procedures a day, serving patients from Canberra and surrounds, the South Coast and the Riverina.
“We are developing intervention procedures related to any chronic pain or cancer pain anywhere in the body,” Dr Jain said about his own specialty.
He said chronic pain was a complex entity that could be treated across disciplines, but some patients needed a break in their pain cycle through various surgical procedures such as joint injection, epidural blocks and spinal cord stimulators.
The core team: Dr Jain with (from left) CEO Roya Behnia, perioperative manager Lucy Clark and Day Hospital manager Nicole Gebert.
The aim overall is to reduce people’s pain and reliance on drugs, and help them to participate in rehabilitation.
“One of the major issues is patients, out of desperation, become dependent on medications, which has its own side effects, and they are not able to take part in rehabilitation because they go in a vicious cycle of not doing anything, getting deconditioned, so we need to break the cycle without chemicals,” Dr Jain said.
“On average, we see 60 to 70 per cent pain reduction and then they can take part in exercise therapy and psychological therapy.
“Our motto is to develop a sustainable self-management plan where they are not dependent on medications or doctors to manage. It’s an integrated facility.”
For long-term patient Sarah Wattam, Dr Jain has been a godsend.
She was in a car hit by a drunk driver in 2008 and has suffered neck and back issues ever since, including migraines, but she could not find a treatment apart from medication.
A mother-of-four with a busy job, Ms Wattam said she could not afford to be laid up with such pain.
“So a big thankyou to Dr Jain and his crew,” she said. “Thanks to you and your experience in this area and being able to help me.
“I am able to live a life now where I’m almost drug-free. I don’t have consistent pain, and I have a team that is cost-effective to come and get treatment.
“It’s fantastic they have this facility because it’s all in the one place. It’s easy to come, park, people can come in, pick you up easily.”
Dr Jain and patient Sarah Wattam: “I am able to live a life now where I’m almost drug-free.”
Keenly aware of the cost of health care, Dr Jain said a charitable trust would be set up to assist selected patients without private insurance or the means to pay.
He recalled a patient telling him that if he had not been able to have his pain treated, he would have taken his own life.
That haunted Dr Jain and drove him to expand his services and a find way to ensure no-one who needed his help would be turned away.
ACT Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith said the hospital would help ease out-of-pocket costs for Canberrans, who often had to travel to Sydney either to receive a more cost-effective treatment or a treatment that was not available in the ACT.
“So this new day hospital, combined with the pain centre and the specialist centre, really provides that holistic approach and means that fewer people will have to do that,” she said
It would also take pressure off the public system and ensure vulnerable people could access care.
“The more state-of-the-art facilities we can have, the more multidisciplinary care and person-centred holistic care we can have in our private sector, the more Canberrans are going to be able to access the care that they need,” Ms Stephen-Smith said.
“Sarah’s story absolutely highlights the critical importance of that.”
Ms Stephen-Smith said care that removed drug dependency was vital and life-saving, given the problems that had emerged with opioid use.
The ACT Day Hospital will be the only non-corporate multi-specialty day hospital in Canberra region.
