NSW Health A Basket Case And May Need Royal Commission Says Nile

The Rev Fred Nile MLC, Leader of the Christian Democratic Party, has stated that the NSW Health System is in a complete mess and may require a joint Federal-State Royal Commission to remedy it.

“It is of great concern to me that there are a lot of sick and suffering people in this State who are not being adequately cared for. Those that find themselves unfortunate enough to suffer physical illness should not have to endure further unnecessary suffering due to Governmental indifference and political face-saving. I find it morally repugnant that the NSW Government has consistently sought to either gloss over or dismiss / misrepresent facts by manipulating data / statistics, rather than address the serious problems within the Health System. The people of this great State deserve better treatment than that is currently on offer. It’s high time the Government took action”, stated Rev Fred Nile.

Rev Fred Nile also gave the following address to the NSW Upper House last night (31/08/06);

“I wish to address serious issues affecting the supply of health services to the people of New South Wales. There is a disparity between resources and infrastructure afforded inner city areas as compared with the growing western suburbs and outback areas. The Government has been slow in providing adequate infrastructure in support of the high growth areas in Sydney's South-West and in some outback areas.

A disparity also exists between public demand for surgery and the supply of medical specialists, surgeons, operating theatres and recovery beds as a result of budgetary constraints. Operating theatres, specialists and surgeons are being underutilised. Because of these budget constraints, surgeons—for example, specialist plastic surgeons—have been allocated only two half days and one full day of surgery a month at Liverpool and Nepean hospitals, during which they are expected to cram in all the work required of them. The President of the Australian Medical Association said recently that medical staff are making mistakes because of the intense pressure placed on them.

Questions have also been asked about manipulation of waiting lists. This issue is raised year after year and there is now confusion about what cases should be included on the lists. The Government redefined "cosmetic surgery" and "therapeutic surgery" and then proceeded to remove cosmetic surgery patients from waiting lists. Honourable members may think that cosmetic surgery simply means having a nose reconstruction procedure, but that is not correct. Patients who have suffered terrible facial injuries and those who cannot breath through their nose now come under the cosmetic surgery umbrella. Despite having already waited for treatment for up to four years, those patients are no longer on waiting lists. Persons with serious infections in their knee joints are no longer classified as knee reconstruction surgery patients but as cosmetic surgery patients. As a result, many patients with painful conditions who have been waiting for procedures for a long time have suddenly vanished from waiting lists.

Further, patients who have serious but non-life-threatening injuries are increasingly being sent home and are therefore also not included on waiting lists. Patients with severe trauma to limbs and hands are being bandaged up and sent home to wait several days before treatment or surgery. Patients with broken jaws, constantly bleeding from the mouth, can expect to spend five or six days at home waiting for treatment. Again, they do not make it on to waiting lists”, said Rev Fred Nile.

“Hospitals are using locums and new graduates to undertake emergency case management and they are diagnosing patients as either not needing care or beyond care. Once again, that results in their being removed from waiting lists. Senior surgeons are concerned that given the nature of the locums' relationship with hospital administrators—who are in a position to provide work and career-advancing opportunities—it could be in their best interests to reduce the number of patients on waiting lists wherever possible.

The apparent use of junior clerks for the collation and coding of medical procedures and operations for statistical analysis is also a concern. Major surgery is often incorrectly coded as a minor procedure by those who do not actively take part in the surgery. For example, a 12-hour micro-surgery operation was recently coded as a minor skin graft at one hospital.

The inflexibility of the ‘Surginet’ data management system is also a problem. This computer program determines the average time a surgeon should take to perform any given procedure. As a result, surgeons are being limited in the time they are given to operate, and that becomes problematic when surgery is being understated or miscoded, or an operation is more complex and falls outside the ‘standard deviation’ of surgery time allocation. This further impacts on the waiting lists and pushes everyone back.

Some serious matters need to be addressed in the State's health system. It is argued that responsibility for health care should be transferred to the Federal Government. This is a serious situation and there may be a case for a royal commission into the hospital system conducted by a joint Federal-State body. It would be independent of political parties, it would deal with facts and it could make recommendations about how to improve the public hospital system in this State and in other States”, Rev Nile stated.