Health, Housing & Growth. Is the Fraser Coast Ready for the Next 20 Years?

Health, Housing & Growth. Is the Fraser Coast Ready for the Next 20 Years?
Guest: Dr Nick Yim

The Fraser Coast is changing.

Our region is growing, but we are also ageing. With an average age of around 51 and strong growth in the over 65 population, what does this mean for our hospitals, medical workforce, housing choices and long term future?

In this episode of Fraser Coast Property Brief, Glen Winney sits down with local doctor and Immediate Past President of AMA Queensland, Dr Nick Yim, to explore one of the biggest questions facing our region.

Are we planning for the population we are becoming?

Together they discuss:
• The current state of healthcare across the Fraser Coast
• Medical workforce shortages and attracting doctors to regional areas
• Hospital capacity and gaps in specialist services
• The connection between housing, health and population growth
• Whether we are building the right types of homes for future workers and residents
• The role of private investment and health precinct planning
• The future of Hervey Bay Hospital and regional advocacy
• What Hervey Bay could look like in 10 to 20 years if we get this right, or wrong

This is a practical, local and forward-looking conversation about health, housing and how communities stay sustainable as they grow.

Whether you work in property, business, healthcare, government or simply care about the future of the Fraser Coast, this episode offers important perspectives on where we are heading and what needs to happen next.

Listen now and join the conversation shaping the future of our region.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to the Fraser Coast Property Brief, the podcast where property, development, and business leaders share what's really happening across the Fraser Coast. Each episode brings you insights into local projects, market trends, and the people helping shape the future of our region. Welcome to the latest episode of Fraser Coast Property Brief. Today my guest is Dr. Nick Yim, local doctor, and the immediate past president of the AMA Queensland. So welcome Nick.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Yeah, thanks, Glenn.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

So today we're we're going to talk about the important conversation around the Fraser Coast. It's growing, it's aging. Our average age is now 51. Much of our population is in the over 65 area. This creates serious questions in our region around health services, around workforce, around specialists, and around housing to support it. So I want to dive into all those things. And I want to do it from a property point of view and how that actually integrates with the health because it's those two things aren't separated, but they both got to work together. And the main things we need. So I might start off a little bit of background about yourself, Nick, and your role here as a doctor, and what is the actual AMA and what was your role there?

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Yeah, so I've been on the Fraser Coast now for over a decade, general practitioner, so I deal with a lot of chronic disease. And I saw a lot of challenges in the region, and that is the reason why I entered medical advocacy. That's where AMA Queensland comes into play. So we are the peak medical body for healthcare professionals, and we advocate for medical practitioners, but more importantly, we also highlight the challenges patients and the community face. So we have direct lines to our state government. And whilst we don't agree and see eye to eye on most things, it's something where we're always respectful in those discussions, and which is great. It's great to advocate for our community.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

So you're trying to lobby for changes and more health services into our area and across Queensland?

SPEAKER_00 2:02

Absolutely. And that's something where we know that under Phrase Coose, as you alluded to, it is a growing population. It's also aging. And what I see is unfortunately my patients are waiting longer. Often they have to travel long distances, and it doesn't have to be that way. So obviously it does take time and it needs to start somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Yep. So let's jump into it. You know, our our number one issue here is we're an aging population. We we've got an average age of 51, the state average is 38. Um, if you look at post-COVID, our biggest growth sector is the over 65 range. Um and from a medical point of view, what does that actually mean for the region? You know, is it pressure on hospitals, doctors? Where's the big problems with this aging population?

SPEAKER_00 2:45

It's all the above. With the aging population, we know that comes with an increased chronic diseases. That includes your diabetes, COPD, your lung diseases, heart disease, uh, the need for joint replacement, uh, cancer diagnoses. And what that means is we need to see doctors. And along with that, we need the healthcare professionals to go along with it, nursing, allied health, physio, pharmacists. At the same time, we need our hospital beds, we need our aged care beds. So there is no one solution, but what we're struggling with at the moment is definitely that health workforce. When we're seeing the immigration of the health workforce, whether it be come from interstate, from the metropolitan areas, overseas, a lot of those clinicians might be a little bit older, they might be mid-koreer to late career, and obviously there's a shelf life for those. So what we do need to do is also recruit, I guess, the trainees, the trainees who stayed longer and at the same time may have their families here and then obviously retire here potentially down the road.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

Yeah, like talking about that, um, we had a demographer up here, Simon Kustamaha, about a year or so ago, and our our health industry constitutes about 22% of our employment in the area. So it's the biggest employer by long shot. Um, but what Simon was saying, over the next 10 or so years, probably a third of that employment is at retirement age, and they'll be dropping it out and actually go into the retirement bucket, but we're not getting that younger generation replacing it. So we're we're heading for a cliff within the next decade. Is that what you're seeing within the health industry?

SPEAKER_00 4:18

Absolutely. That that's one of my biggest concerns is um whilst we have a lot of housing that is targeted for the over 65, which is a really big positive because housing is really important. Um, unfortunately, that means that, say, your healthcare professionals in your 30s and 40s, um, they're finding it difficult to access this area. And that's what I'm hearing from my colleagues in the metropolitan areas such as Brisbane and Sunshine Coast, they do want to come up here, uh, but they go, they're not really, there's nothing available to them to buy.

SPEAKER_01 4:47

All right. We'll jump into that in a minute. So let's start with facilities. We've got existing facilities, we've got a private hospital, uh public hospital. What are we needing for the growth of our region, you know, and the aging population? What are the key facilities or the gaps in our market at the moment?

SPEAKER_00 5:03

So on the Fraser coasts, we have the public sector, so Harvey Bay and Merriborough Hospital. In the private sector, we have Uniting Care, which is St. Stephen's, and also the surgical centre as well. They do a great service to our region, but at the same time, we do need to have increase that infrastructure. We need investment in the area, and we've spoken before, it'd be great to have a cath lab. Um, so for the people who have heart attacks, we don't need to fly them out to Sunshine Coast or Brisbane. We know if we can deliver the care in our region, it just means it's less travel for those individual patients. They get better faster, um, and obviously less pressure on those families.

SPEAKER_01 5:40

Yep. So obviously aging population. Is the CAF lab the number one? If you had to get one new thing in this area, is the CAF lab the number one thing, or is there a multiple things, oncology and and mental health and different things? What's the Yeah?

SPEAKER_00 5:54

I I think there's multiple aspects. There's definitely many, many things that would be beneficial. Things that can utilize our existing infrastructure. So things such as public hematology, so treatment for lymphomas, leukemias, um, innostroke publicly, um, the closest public innostroct is in Brisbane, and that's not acceptable. At the same time, things like public respiratory would be highly beneficial for those lung cancers. So there's many, many things that would be quite beneficial, and we've spoken about previously a public-private agreements where specialists come up here working privately. Why can't they do also public work as well? They just need the incentive there.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

And also the um, you know, emergency section in a public hospital, why can't they push the beds across the St. Stephen's as well when they're overloaded? Um, rather than a five-hour wait outside the hospital. Um so the key seems to be health workers. Um, and I I put them in probably there's probably two or three health working categories. We've got we've got a lot of health industry workers that work around retirement villages and things like that. We've got a lot of that. We've got that nursing type staff in hospitals, then we've got the specialists. Uh you know, is the problem just with getting a specialist up here, or is it getting your your nurse? Where's the biggest gaps in the workers'?

SPEAKER_00 7:11

It's actually every single industry. Yeah. And if we look at aged care, so the uh residential aged care facilities, the nursing homes, um, their challenge is um the nursing and also care staff. Uh the challenge for them is retention of their staff. There's a big rotational staff mix, which can be quite frustrating for patients, the clients, and also the um the employers. So if we that's one element. The other big challenge as you alluded to is obviously the sub-specialists, and across the nation, uh, there is a shortage of medical specialists. It takes decades to train. Um, so obviously there are different recruitment strategies from a national perspective, uh, but that's something where unfortunately, from a regional town, we need to be attractive to ensure that we can get the best of the best up here.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

So it leads into the next what makes us attractive. Obviously, housing product is an issue. Um, you know, we're we're running short of housing product. I don't think we make the right housing, especially for that younger nurse or whatever else that just wants a two-bedroom apartment or whatever else. We keep building four-bedroom houses on estates and they don't want to be money lawns on weekend, they do shift work, everything else. Um does our housing product need to change to attract the people?

SPEAKER_00 8:26

Personally, I think there needs to be an adjustment. Uh, as you alluded to, someone who might be a new graduate or a newly uh specialist, they still want to travel, they don't want to spend their time managing an acre block, they don't want to be doing mom de lawns, they they want the luxury of being able to lock up on the weekend, fly to Brisbane, uh fly to Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, or overseas and have their weekend off. So that I think that's definitely we do need an increased number of potentially those, I guess high density living, as we call it. Um, similarly, uh, I think it's opportunities as well. So we acknowledge with infrastructure on the Fraser Coast, it takes time, but also the entertainment value as well. We need to build that as well to keep people having their, I guess, weekends in town.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

So, what's uh you come here 10 years ago, so you would have been a younger doctor coming up from uh CBD Brisbane or wherever else. So, what attracted you to come up here and what are the elements that you're missing when you turned up here? What's the what's the lifestyle elements that are really still missing here?

SPEAKER_00 9:29

So, the reason why I came to the Fraser Coast was for training purposes. Um, so I grew up in Brisbane, I thought let's take an opportunity to train on the Fraser Coast, and two years later um I decided I'm gonna make Fraser Coast my hometown. The the great things about the Fraser Coast, it's easy access, the transportation, you don't have to be stuck in peacour traffic, going to work every morning, it's only a five-minute drive as opposed to when I lived on a Brisbane Gold Coast, it's often 45 minutes. Um that's one great advantage. I guess the pricing point was great. It's something where it was significantly cheaper to enter the housing market uh 10 years ago compared to Brisbane. But but similarly, it's you do realize is we do have many things here. You can go out and have a drink on Esplanade, you have the restaurants there, and you realize with the modern age is I didn't miss the big supermarkets, the shopping centres, didn't have to have the Myers and Dave Joe's. Because you do that online now. Yeah. Um that's a big change.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

And so, you know, are we adapting? Are we getting enough restaurants, bars, outdoor leisure type things for the younger generation that come here?

SPEAKER_00 10:39

I think there's a definitely a bit of a deficit. There's something that we can increase the entertainment. It we we are seeing that growth, the talkie skinness area on Esplanade, we are seeing that growth there, the new business, hospitality, the entertainment. There's a long way to go, I think, uh, to keep that here. But at the same time, I think we need to highlight the opportunities of what people can do on the weekends, the beach, the water.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

Yeah. I did a uh podcast with Sarah Farage and Council acting on behalf of the young professionals just a couple of weeks ago. And she made a very valid point. It's about the messaging we give as a community. We we got signs up the highway of older people going into retirement villages and things like that and whale watching, but we don't do any of our messaging for a young couple or a young executive or you know that nurse that makes it really attractive. Say, geez, I want to go live up there. How can we change our messaging to bring more doctors to the region?

SPEAKER_00 11:42

I I think it's just more sort of a marketing um.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

What's the message? If you were 30 again and you wanted to come up here, what's the what would be the message that would attract you?

SPEAKER_00 11:51

The message here is the experience is just top-notch. Yeah, not just from a clinical perspective, but also from a lifestyle perspective, it's still top-notch. Um, pricing, it's still very, very competitive. I still think the cost of living on the Fraser Coast, it's much better than say in Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast. And from the clinicians, for the doctors, nurses, healthcare professionals, there are the opportunities here. We have the universities, research opportunities, um just as much as what we have in the in big cities, I think.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

Yep, and five or ten minutes to just about any any place of employment in the which is a big thing in when you're living in cities. Um, let's get on to a couple other topics. Um, we've had a new Wide Bay hospital health board um in just the last month or two. What influence does the health board have on our hospital and our growth area? What do they actually do?

SPEAKER_00 12:46

Like all boards, um, their key role is the strategy moving forward for the region, uh, which is the Wide Bay region. It's a great opportunity for a bit of a turnover of boards where you know with all boards in all industries, uh, once boards have been in the same, I guess, for extended periods of times, it can give it stale. But I think now I think it's a great opportunity to look at what's our plan for the future, taking into account the growth, um, the I guess the areas of deficiencies and see where we can grow. And I think the key message that I have for the Wiber Health Service Board is that what is our long-term strategy? We do need investment, and sure there might be areas that we might be running thin on funds, but we need to invest for the future, otherwise we can't recruit and retain those future workforce.

SPEAKER_01 13:29

Yeah. I see there's a few more Harvey Bay identities on the board. Like I I've always had a bit of an issue over the past decades that our health system we're stuck under White Bay and it's been very Bundaberg-centric. We've had Bundaberg heads of boards, we've had the funding. Previous government were going to push into a level five hospital in Bundaburg. We seem to be the second cousin, even though Harvey Bay's growth, we're a bigger city than Bundaberg as population, and our growth rate is far bigger than Bundaburg. They don't seem to be taking in a 20-year strategy and setting up Harvey Bay as the number one centre in the wide bay. Do you?

SPEAKER_00 14:09

And I think that's probably one of the complexities of our healthcare system, and and that's something where it's at the hospital health service level, but obviously, what I've seen definitely at the state and federal levels, when there's all these interplays, uh, there's always competing interest.

SPEAKER_02 14:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

Um, it's always challenging. Um, and obviously with healthcare expenditure, it's always going to go up. And I acknowledge that money is a finite number.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

Yep, yep. And I see recently been a bit of controversy around the electrical boundary changes. Uh our state member David Lee didn't want to lose the Harvey Bay Hospital out of Harvey Bay and put it into the Maribor, which makes a lot of sense because you know, everything's about lobbying and that, and it'd be very hard for a Maribor representative to be lobbying for a Harvey Bay and Maribor hospital at the same time because it's only one bucket of money where David could actually really lobby hard for Harvey Bay. Um, what did you think about the electoral boundary changes?

SPEAKER_00 15:00

Yeah, so I spoke to David Lee and John Baronis about this issue uh separately, and and one of my concerns was also the workload for that MP. Uh, we we know that healthcare, there's a lot of challenges, and even a lot of my patients will go to the MP to go, hey, these are my issues. So if we had both hospitals in one electorate, that means that workload for the MP will exponentially grow. Um, and as you alluded to, advocacy is really important. So hence having, I think, separate electorates makes a lot of sense.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

Yep, yep. So let's have a look into the future. Um, 10, 20 years' time, we've got this growing population. There's obviously a cliff uh where the aging will start, you know, dying off. And and actually this year, it's the first time Harvey Bay deaths um have outstripped the births in an in a natural form without the immigration. So we're already starting to get at a tipping point. If we don't fix our imbalance of our demographics, where do you see the health industry and the health workforce in 10 to 20 years' time in this region?

SPEAKER_00 16:06

If we don't have some solutions moving forward that's sustainable, um, unfortunately, the delivery care may change. That might mean a reliance on a locum fly and fly workforce, which is not ideal. We want people living in the area servicing the area because they actually know what services are available. Whilst I acknowledge that currently there are some fly and flight services which do a great job for our uh community. I think in the long run we know that if we can train our clinicians or healthcare professionals, if we train them in the region, they're more likely to stay in the region. And I guess they have that connection to the area.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

Do you see any real changes with the advent of AI coming on? Um, you know, I've read a quite a few books on AI, and you know, COVID saw us in the first thing we started doing teams, teams in with doctors, and we're starting getting, you know, this virtual care and diagnosis. AI has got to exponentiate that whole thing, and you know, some of the things are saying, well, you know, you'll be able to put a blood sample in and the AI will actually give you a proper antibiotic for your specific issue rather than broad spectrum. Do you see that's going to make some major changes in healthcare in the next 10 years?

SPEAKER_00 17:18

AI, it's already made a huge amount of changes in the healthcare industry, also in many, many industries. But we also know that patients like that human touch, the person to speak to, the emotional connection, whereas I don't think AI can deliver that. We will utilise AI definitely to improve efficiencies, like what we've done with technology, telehealth, uh, going through the internet. I think it's become a lot closer, which is quite handy. Uh, but I think with the checks and balances in the healthcare industry, uh, we do need to get it right.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

Yep. So um advice, you know, if we're going to make changes, what are the key changes before we go in that cliff? Is it is it housing, is it the attraction of younger workers? Is it our universities with the courses bringing the pathways in? Um better health precinct, you know, like there's been discussions that the TAFE precinct could become a health precinct, and then TAFE come back down next to university. I think David's pushing that one at the moment. What's some of the structural changes we need to do to actually fix our health care going forward?

SPEAKER_00 18:28

Well we'll go through a few big headlines. So, number one is is infrastructure. We do need to ensure that there's adequate healthcare infrastructure moving forward over the next 20 years, and it requires strategic planning moving forward. If we have that healthcare infrastructure, whether it be a cath lab, a research site, that's also going to attract uh the specialised staff. So we know that with specialized staff, if they can see a strategy, they they'll be able to move to the area. So that's number one.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

Number two just on that one, does that mean a bigger or a uh a second hospital or something, or can it be done under current infrastructure?

SPEAKER_00 19:04

It potentially can be done under current infrastructure, but it's also um having those stakeholder meetings with the universities who's going to do that research. So obviously we've got UQ here, uh, we've got University of Sunshine Coast here as well. So those are the benefits and a TAFE as well. So see what they need as well. All right.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

And the rest of it, um, you know, are our university courses matching our future health workers, or are we mismatched because we seem to be a mismatch in the other sectors, like you know, you know, town planning, engineering, we're not getting all those things. Um, is health a mismatch with our courses?

SPEAKER_00 19:43

Yeah, so training pathways itself, it's really important. The biggest thing is if we can start training more of our doctors, nurses, allied health, pharmacists in our region, all the research has shown that if they more if they train in the region, they're more likely to stay in the region. And I think that's something that we can definitely boost up our numbers.

SPEAKER_01 20:02

Yep. All right, so final question. You can take off your AMA hat now, so you're you're not bound by those rules. Um, what would be your advice to local community leaders? That goes from council to state to federal government leaders on changing what do we need to change the better our healthcare and for you know what's what's the turning point or what what do they need to be focusing on or lobbying for?

SPEAKER_00 20:29

So from a healthcare perspective, one of the number one thing is we need to increase that Medicare rebates. Obviously, out-of-pocket expenses are growing, that gap payments are growing, and if we don't change um and increase that Medicare rebate, unfortunately, people are gonna pay more and more out-of-pocket expenses. The other key thing is we do need a private sector in our region. If we don't have um a private hospital, for example, uh that means is we're gonna have less opportunity to recruit that workforce. So we need a viable private and public service, and that's one of the concerns that I have is given that the increase of private health insurance, the loss of the rebate for some of the over 65s, um, we are gonna see um, I guess, consumers drop out on private cover, and that is a little bit concerning.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

So, was there anything in this federal government um budget last week that actually gonna change any of the rebates or any change? I know there's a health fund that's coming out, is it you know, and they're doing uh emergency clinics, things like that. Anything gonna benefit us?

SPEAKER_00 21:30

Uh I don't think it's really gonna benefit us acutely in the short term. Um it was a little bit disappointing uh disappointing for our region.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

Yeah, yeah, it seems like uh we're on the wrong side of politics at the moment, so I think we got left out. I saw uh David Bat standing next to a bear tree in Canberra saying this is what we got from the budget. Um all right, thank you very much, Nick. Any last words or any advice on on the health industry for the phrase guest?

SPEAKER_00 21:57

Yeah, I I think the key thing here is um I would love. To see, I guess, a bit of a change in the housing arrangements. I think high density, I think we need to definitely look into that. The other big thing is we do need to invest in our region from an infrastructure perspective as well in healthcare and also investing into the workforce so we can train but also retain them in our region.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

Alright, so the big uh takeaway is we can't do nothing for the next five or ten years. We have to do something different to what we've been doing, otherwise, we've got a cliff coming. So I think all the leaders in the community need to stand up and actually understand that our aging population is now not a benefit but a concern going forward.

SPEAKER_00 22:41

100%.

SPEAKER_01 22:42

All right, thank you very much, and thank you for listening to this latest podcast. Check us out on Facebook, um, YouTube, and your favourite podcast channel. Tune in again next week.