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RDN welcomes opportunity to support Broken Hill
27th October 2025
Last week, RDN’s Community Solutions Manger, Katie McDonell, met with representatives from Broken Hill City Council, healthcare providers in Broken Hill and Federal Member for Parkes, Jamie Chaffey MP, to discuss health priorities, challenges and how to work collaboratively to improve outcomes for the community.
With services in Broken Hill operating under certain workforce pressures for a prolonged period, RDN was invited to support Council and help address the challenges that need additional support.
“ACCHS and practices in Broken Hill have met these challenges with innovation and resilience,” Katie McDonell said.
“Services are incredibly well run by passionate people and they've adapted models of care and ways of working, to work around the challenges. However these challenges now surpass things that can be addressed at an individual level,” she said.
Katie says Broken Hill City Council have shown great interest in addressing the situation and RDN welcomes the opportunity to be involved.
“A priority now will be bringing along key stakeholders, many of whom are already working to address aspects of the situation in Broken Hill, and the community to clearly articulate what’s on offer on Broken Hill,” Katie said.
“We also welcome Federal Member for Parkes, Jamie Chaffey’s engagement, which we hope will assist in elevating issues which require spotlight at a government level,” she said.
Jamie Chaffey spoke with ABC Broken Hill while visiting and told host, Patrick Reincke, that his visit to Broken Hill would be focussed on health.
“It’s the continuity of care… that can be a real concern for many people,” Mr Chaffey told Patrick.
“I'm very fortunate to have an existing relationship with the Rural Doctors Network. I've asked them to come out and meet with me and Council and some of the healthcare providers over these few days.
“What I've asked for them to do is something I've seen quite successful in other communities in the past where there's a deep dive and a relationship built over a length of time with the community, with the providers, whether that's the Local Health District (LHD), or the primary health network or allied health workers, general practitioners or healthcare industry within this community to break down to see ‘what are the real issues?’, if we're going to build this back, make it more resilient, make sure that we've got a plan to have the right people with the right services in the right locations for the future for Broken Hill…And you can only really do that if you go back to the very, very basics and build it back up again.”
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