David McGowan It's not just the money

Imagine cooking without salt. Some people do and they get used to it even prefer it The food will be nutritious and presentable but the important attraction of taste will for most of us be not as good and lacks an essential ingredient
The relocation project of the RAH has exposed the colossal waste of money proposed by the Rann Government in moving the hospital . If we allow it to proceed, they will not only commit $1.7bn they didn’t have in an extraordinary Hire Purchase scheme; but they will also isolate the RAH from the synergy of its neighbours, the University , the IMVS laboratories , the established research community and the Dental Hospital. The resulting product will be the very much poorer and lack essential ingredients. Just like food cooked without salt .
The RAH Board, dissolved by the Rann Government in 2004 , spent significant effort assuring that the hospital was able to cooperate usefully with its scientific and teaching neighbours. ( So important were these links, the medical school was represented on the Board and for some time the CEO of the hospital was the CEO of the IMVS seconded to the RAH.)
Isolation of the RAH in the railway yards downgrades the opportunities that arise out of the present proximity . Take for example where a patient’s laboratory results are wildly unusual , the treating doctor can discuss the reasons with the scientist involved , then as the clinical picture becomes clearer, the associated students, undergraduate and postgraduate, not only see the case for themselves, but also observe the process of determining what is really happening to the patient. The RAH away from its professional neighbours loses these opportunities.
In these modern days of phones, email and twitter, communication can still be achieved – eventually. However, nothing has yet effectively replaced the advantage of real human to human contact and discussion in the mechanism of human progress. It is no accident that much scientific progress is achieved by teams of researchers rather than independent enquirers – it is the interaction, the debate of ideas that drives enquiry further . It is the student experience of this process that underlies the inspiration and then later persistence that produces the next generation of knowledge. This is what the Rann Government wants to throw away.
The Rann Government’s RAH policy is to abandon a functioning hospital worth $1bn , build a new building elsewhere and spend an extra $700 million to do so . The new research facility on North Tce West won’t help: it is a new facility with no reputation of its own, lacking neighbouring routine laboratories,
The railway yards hospital will probably be a functional hospital but like food cooked without salt it will lack the vital ingredients that give the RAH its world class reputation . The Railway yard development appears to me to be very poor policy indeed
David McGowan PSM Member of the RAH Board of Directors 1999-2004.