Sandringham District and Community Hospital (VIC)

[Wloszy]

Hi,

My husband and I are hoping to start a family this year, and have been agonising over whether or not to take out private health insurance or not. It looks like we are not going to, and are considering Sandringham Hospital as our prefernece for the babies delivery.
Has anyone given birth at Sandringham Hospital, and if so how was the experience? We are hoping to tee up a tour in the next week or so to get a feel for it.
Thanks for your help :)

[Jules16]

Hey Wloszy. I just found this thread as am also considering Sandringham. Did you ending up deciding to book in?

Cheers

[olga82]

Hey,
We've chosen Sandy to have our girl. We had a tour there and they are doing some renovations to the rooms. The midwifes are nice, but I found that waiting for the doctor there was a killer, we had to wait over 2 hours to be seen. Otherwise its really close to our house and i prefer smaller hosp. to large one like the monash.

[cowaline]

There are five models of care at Sandringham, and yes the bulk billing clinic is always very busy. But they have the midwives clinic, half hour appointments and no waiting time. Also shared care, with the bulk billing clinic and your GP, if he/she is accredited to Sandy Hospital.
GP Obstetric Care is with one of the GP Obstetricians (fee applies and you need to ask them what that is), for your antenatal care. Then you book into Sandy as a public patient and the GP Obstetrician will come in and deliver (exceptions as with Private Obstetricians , in that illness or holidays), so very similar to private care as in you have the continuity of the one GP Obstetrician throughout your pregnancy.

I know the hospital now has a "level 2" ( 3 levels apply from tertiary hospitals to country hospitals and level 2 is in the middle), care nursery and is staffted 24/7. Also a breastfeeding support service and extended postnatal care.

Hope this helps.