Armidale woman's support for petition to split Hunter New England Health District 'close to home'

"The current system is not working so they have got to look at doing something different," Mrs Harvey said.

Mrs Harvey works in Burton's Saddlery in Armidale - one of the many shops where a paper petition is going around to get 10,000 signatures so the split of the health district can be debated in the NSW state parliament. They've already surpassed the half-way mark.

"Everybody we've spoken to is happy to sign it," she said. "They tell me something has got to be done about the health system."

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In 2014, Mrs Harvey's father died due to complications after a breathing tube was inserted down his throat and went into his stomach instead of his lung at the Armidale Hospital.

"It blew his guts out," she said.

"When we went to see him, we thought there was something not quite right about him because his chest was all puffy."

Her father Neil Harvey - a prominent horse rider who went on to compete in major competitions representing Armidale during his time - had arrived at Armidale Hospital suffering chest pains in 2014.

After a long wait, he was eventually booked him into a room for day surgery instead of a ward where he could have received more attention.

"I kept trying to tell them he had a heart specialist and asked if they could get her to come and look at him," Mrs Harvey said. "But they just said 'no'."

"They said he was dehydrated and they were going to release him the next day. That night he collapsed in the toilets, and that's when they put the tube in him."

"That situation killed him."

Mr Harvey was transferred to Tamworth hospital, and sadly, he later passed away in the Intensive Care Unit.

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"He never came out of hospital because he was for so long without oxygen to his brain that everything shut down," Mrs Harvey said.

"He would've just been like, 'I'm not living like this'. So he gave up fighting (for his life)".

Mr Harvey died at the age of 64.

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