Maternity ward, ICU to remain open at St John of God Bendigo ... for now

The hospital announced on Tuesday, November 21 it had met with stakeholders, staff and the general public during a five-week review into the services.

The review came after chief executive Michael Hogan said a decline in local demand for maternity and ICU services, along with the challenge of securing specialist doctors and nurses, made them challenging to maintain.

"We have received positive feedback, strong public support and enthusiasm from both the medical community and the general public in relation to our desire to retain these services," he said in a statement.

"We are pleased to advise that we are committing to maintaining these services for the community in the short term."

Mr Hogan said the hospital needed to "secure significantly increased levels of patient activity and improvements to both services" if they were to permanently remain.

He told the Advertiser the hospital needed to have more than 100 extra births a year to achieve a "sustainable number".

The hospital's ICU, which has an eight-bed capacity, had seen a drop of 12 per cent compared to pre-COVID levels.

Quarry Hill mother of two Emma Jensen, who had Millie, 6, and Logan, 18 months, at St John of God Bendigo, said the news the maternity services would continue gave her goosebumps.

"It's awesome," she said. "I've had so many girlfriends that have been about 20 weeks pregnant and they're not sure about what's going to happen for them, so I've got goosebumps for them.

"They get to experience the special treatment of St John of God, which we needed with Logan."

Ms Jensen launched a community campaign to save the private maternal service when she learned it was under review.

She suffered a secondary postpartum haemorrhage during the birth of her first child, and experienced similar blood loss during the birth of her second.

She told the Advertiser in October the personalised treatment she received at the private hospital gave her confidence in having a second child.

"The service needs to stay open, it's so much easier to keep a service open than to fight for it when it's shut," she said.

"For lots of women that haven't even had a baby yet, it means that they've got a choice and they can stay in Bendigo, they can have higher quality care."

Ms Jensen said for the service to remain open permanently, more obstetricians were needed in Bendigo.

"At the moment, there's only three [obstetricians] that run at St John of God, and that's not enough," she said.

"That's not enough for choice, that's not enough for them, they're going to burn out."

Mr Hogan said St John of God would "continue to work in collaboration with our stakeholders, including Bendigo Health, over the coming months so as to ensure planned changes are successfully implemented".

"We look forward to continuing to provide high quality private health care, close to home for the community of Bendigo and the surrounding regions," he said.