News

We understand there’s been a lot of confusion and misinformation circulating about changes to AWH’s surgical services.

We want to reassure our staff and community that Albury Wodonga Health has a highly skilled team of surgical specialists and medical professionals who remain committed to ensuring continuity of care and maintaining the highest standards of treatment and support for our community.

We have taken proactive steps to ensure this, including:

• All patients on Dr Stuchbery’s waitlist will have their care transferred to another AWH surgical staff specialist. Their current position on the waitlist will not be affected by this change.
• In the last year, AWH has engaged Dr Sarah Clark, a fully accredited Breast Surgeon who has completed the Breast Surgeons of Australia and New Zealand post-fellowship specialist training program. Dr Clark is ready to take on all local public breast surgery, including breast cancer cases, as well as all waitlists and new referrals.
• Our current general surgery workforce has the capacity to manage additional surgical requirements beyond breast surgery. Allocation of theatre and outpatient clinic services is underway to ensure service continuity.
• AWH is now pleased to offer fully public outpatient services for breast surgery referrals, ensuring no out-of-pocket expenses for public patients. Radiology and pathology services are also fully covered for these referrals. A new publicly funded colorectal clinic has also recently been established, operated by AWH’s Endoscopy Surveillance Clinical Nurse Consultant in partnership with a qualified colorectal surgeon.

Together, these initiatives mean that for the first time, AWH can provide a suite of fully publicly accessible general, endoscopy and breast surgery outpatient models - improving equity of access to surgical care across our community.

AWH remains committed to ensuring community members across our region continue to have timely access to surgical care, and we are confident that service delivery will remain strong through this transition.

We encourage our community to seek accurate information directly from AWH channels - where our commitment to transparency and quality care remains front and centre.