Chemo bungle victim Bronte Higham says he’s cancer is now terminal but no health authority has apologised for his condition

A CANCER patient with only weeks to live blames his deadly relapse on the chemotherapy error scandal — and he is still waiting for an apology and compensation.

Bronte Higham with his wife Ricki at their Hallett Cove home. Picture: Matt Turner.

• Medics involved in chemo underdosing referred for investigation
• Patient fears cover-up over chemotherapy bungle
• Medical records of chemo bungle victim Andrew Knox disappeared
• Victim fears ‘open disclosure’ policy will increase SA Health secrecy

• READ BELOW: VICTIMS TOLD GET A LAWYER

A CANCER patient with only weeks to live blames his deadly relapse on the chemotherapy error scandal — and he is still waiting for an apology and compensation.

Bronte Higham, 67, said as soon as he was told of the chemotherapy mistake three weeks after his final treatment in January last year, he knew he would die.

“I felt ‘that’s it, I’ve got no hope’,” he said.

The Hallett Cove man said a personal apology from those responsible for the error — which also affected nine other patients — would have helped restore his faith in the health system.

“If people fronted up and said they’d made a mistake and apologised, that would have helped,” he said. “Not one person has put their hand up.”

In August last year, The Advertiser revealed 10 acute myeloid leukaemia patients at the state’s two biggest hospitals, the Royal Adelaide Hospital and Flinders Medical Centre, received only half the recommended dose of the chemotherapy drug Cytarabine between July 2014 and January 2015.

Although he still looks in reasonable health, Mr Higham said he was told five weeks ago he had from two weeks to a few months to live.

Because of this, he wants the outstanding issue of compensation dealt with promptly.

“I don’t want to fall off the perch and they’re left to deal with it,” he said, in tears. He said stricken patients and their families should be offered an ex gratia compensation payment before they all died.

“(Health Minister) Jack Snelling has admitted the error in treatments, so what is the holdup?”

Adding to his distress has been mismanagement of his condition since the bungle. His wife Ricki said one incident was a “terrifying experience” that risked his life.

Mr Higham is among the patients who will appear at a Legislative Council select committee inquiry, which begins next Tuesday.

Cancer chemo bungle victim Andrew Knox. .

Another patient, Andrew Knox, said the relapse rate among five of the six people that he knew of was more than 80 per cent — already 10 per cent above the expected relapse rate for the deadly blood disease.

“I have no knowledge of the other four, so it’s 83 per cent and probably worse,” Mr Knox said. “On that sample, it is devastating.”

SA Health yesterday refused to provide information on the other four patients, citing patient confidentiality.

Mr Higham said he was particularly shattered because when he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia he was told it had to be treated “hard and fast”.

Instead, he was one of ten critically ill people treated at the RAH and FMC who were given only half the recommended dose of Cytarabine because of a transcription error at the RAH that omitted the words “twice a day”.

Mr Knox — who is still in remission but has a “day by day confrontation” with fears of a relapse — said therecommended dose was already being halved as part of a new protocol which was not cleared by RAH or FMC ethics committees.

The incorrect data entry of this new non-authorised dose meant the ten patients received 25 per cent less chemotherapy than under the previous approved and recommended treatment.

“That was never divulged to us,” he said. “I discovered it from my treatment documents and a direct request for the protocol that would have applied, had it not been for the new one.”

Mr Higham’s family has high praise for the nurses but not for SA Health. They are also grateful to Mr Knox who was the first of the ten to go public.

“He’s been incredible, he’s our guardian angel,” Ricki Higham said.

Since his relapse, Mr Higham’s illness has been further mismanaged. News of his fatal relapse was wrongly delivered in a phone call by a nurse who rang to check his admission for a bone marrow biopsy on a day when he was due for routine treatment. An hour later his doctor rang to apologise and gave him the bad news. “He was supposed to ring me and tell me I’d relapsed but admissions got in first,” Mr Higham said. “It’s a circus.”

On May 10 another management error occurred when he sought emergency help at FMC for bleeding from the roof of his mouth. Although neutropenic — meaning he had no immune system — he was forced to spend 45 minutes in emergency with patients likely to be infectious. “It was a terrifying experience,” Ricki Higham said.

SA Health chief executive David Swan has since apologised and instructed staff to flag his medical record so it never happened again.

The family of one of the patients who died, Chris McRae, had planned to speak to the inquiry on Tuesday but will instead attend the funeral of Mr McRae’s wife, Natalie, who died unexpectedly last week after routine surgery. Family representative Mike McRae said Natalie’s death could not be blamed on Chris’s death last year but it had a terrible impact on her.

“Who knows, it may have contributed towards it,” Mr McRae said.

He said the family would make a later submission.

“The family is still looking for compensation because of what happened,” he said.

“It’s had a terrible impact on the three children.” He said an apology would be wonderful, too.

“It was bad enough that it happened in the hospital but the fact it was then downplayed by the bureaucrats at SA Health didn’t help matters at all,” he said.

VICTIMS TOLD TO GET A LAWYER

By Penny Debelle

THE SA Government’s insurers will not make compensation payments to victims but has told them to “lawyer up” and prepare individual claims. Andrew Knox said he and Bronte Higham approached the insurers, SAICORP, about the compensation process.

“The answer was to go and lawyer up, we are not prepared to make an offer until you have lawyers,” Mr Knox said. “In my experience, if they are decent people and model litigants, what they should be doing is making an offer.”

Mr Knox estimated it would cost from $20,000 to $30,000 to prepare a damages claim even though the case against the Government, and its two major hospitals, was straightforward. “There can be no denial of liability (by SA Health),” he said. “The only question that could be raised is whether they have made the victims and their families suffer unreasonably and Lord knows, that’s clear.”

Mr Knox said he would use the parliamentary inquiry to name the clinicians and bureaucrats responsible for the initial mistake and the subsequent disclosure and reporting failures. He said the committee would then have finite allegations with which to deal.

The committee will look in particular at the culture and governance in hospitals, at SA Health and the Government’s response to the errors, and the impact of risk management on support given to victims – in particular, use of confidential agreements to gag patients.

An independent review in November found “an abject failure of governance” in which clinical staff did not comply with incident management and disclosure policy. Mr Knox will tell the inquiry “not a scintilla of remorse or contrition” had been shown by any of the clinicians and bureaucrats, other than SA Health chief David Swan.