Two Victorian facilities have come under the spotlight. Meanwhile, in Albury-Wodonga …
LaTrobe Regional Health staff are speaking to the media without going through their communications team about their hospital management’s request for them not to speak to the media without going through their communications team.
What sounds like a minor gripe about hospital protocol – LRH is certainly not the first, last or biggest hospital to ask staff to run everything through a comms professional (try talking to anyone at Royal Melbourne Hospital, for example) – has been the cherry on top of what the Herald Sun called “major concerns” about Gippsland’s largest regional hospital in Traralgon.
According to the News Corp outlet, “multiple hospital insiders” have been talking about treatment and staffing shortages at LRH.
In February that included an alleged plan by LRH to offer locum anaesthetists up to $10,000 a day to fill shifts in its surgery program.
In March it included the reporting of seven patient deaths to Safer Care Victoria – “The cases were so concerning that SCV chief executive Michael Roberts flagged them with Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas’s office and Health Department secretary Euan Wallace,” reported the HS.
Now it’s a “gag order”.
Is it though? A leaked email from CEO Don McRae about LRH’s “media contact policy” that advises staff to “decline any request for a statement or comment on behalf of the hospital and refer the media representative to either the Executive or General Manager of Strategy and Engagement”, sounds pretty bog-standard to us.
As an LRH spokesperson told the Herald Sun: “Our Media Contact Policy is there to support staff and ensure they have the help and advice of our experienced communications team in any engagement with the media.”
The jury’s out on that one. But that’s not to minimise previous concerns about hospital treatment and staffing shortages.
Box Hill Hospital and its operator, Eastern Health were also on the receiving end this week, following the publication of emergency specialist Dr Ben McKenzie’s horrific experience watching his son Max die after receiving “substandard care”.
It’s an awful story, made worse by allegations that Box Hill Hospital did not properly report the young man’s death, then investigated itself, then refused to give its report to the McKenzies, according to the Herald Sun.
Eastern Health has been accused of ignoring questions and meeting requests from the parents, as well as not reporting a “sentinel event” to Safer Care Victoria until Dr McKenzie did so himself.
The Herald Sun reported that an Eastern Health spokesperson said it was “cooperating with the coronial process”.
HSD has reached out to Eastern Health’s CEO Professor David Plunkett for comment.
On and on and on in Albury-Wodonga
Victorian health minister Mary-Anne Thomas has agreed to meet with Wodonga mayor Ron Mildren about the ongoing saga of the border cities’ hospital redevelopment.
Regular followers of HSD will know this has been going on for months – read our coverage here, here, here and here.
Now the councils are getting involved.
“We now have a meeting … in Melbourne on 4 June,” Cr Mildren was quoted in the Border Mail as saying.
“I am looking forward to that conversation and that opportunity to explain and have her understand the things that we’re going through and the things we want the government to know.”
Albury mayor Kylie King is also getting involved and a draft document outlining joint health concerns was close to being finalised.
“It focuses on the resourcing and how it all fits together, it does not focus on where it (a new hospital) will be located, that will be determined at a future point in time and if it turns out to be the existing site then so be it, but I doubt that,” Cr Mildren was reported to say.
“I think the most probable thing is once the due diligence is done, it will be a greenfields site it could be in Albury, it could be in Wodonga, it will be based on merit.”
Cr Mildren said there was also a push to have a tripartite agreement on Border health governance rules and with the federal, NSW and Victorian governments.
Tensions have risen a little between the two councils since then, apparently, with Wodonga councillors allegedly telling Albury councillors to step up their advocacy, a move that caused Albury deputy mayor Steve Bowen to respond.
“We are absolutely doing that, we are supporting and working collaboratively in that, and we are advocating not to the media, we are advocating to the right people, the people who make the decisions,” said Cr Bowen, as reported by the redoubtable BM.
“We don’t decide where the hospital goes, the state government does that.
“We just advocate for the best possible outcomes.”
Somebody just needs to build the damn hospital.