Claims closure of 28-bed Royal Adelaide Hospital ward will cause up to three extra deaths a month
THE abrupt closure of a 28-bed ward at the Royal Adelaide Hospital will cause up to three unnecessary deaths a month, a prominent critic of Transforming Health claims.
- Health chief: Transforming Health ‘a house of cards’
- Key SA Health figure Chris Zeitz ’supports Transforming Health despite criticism’
- Dozens of hospital beds to be closed at RAH and QEH
THE abrupt closure of a 28-bed ward at the Royal Adelaide Hospital will cause up to three unnecessary deaths a month, a prominent critic of Transforming Health claims.
Professor Warren Jones cites a leaked internal RAH analysis he says was prepared by a senior clinician and circulated to other staff indicating the number of deaths due to the ward closure will almost double to about four or five a month.
Opposition health spokesman Stephen Wade seized on the document to warn: “The government will be responsible for an increase in mortality.”
SA Health officials have been unable to verify the document quoted by Prof Jones.
The S7 ward was ostensibly closed for the Christmas break and was supposed to reopen on January 23, but SA Health now has closed it permanently.
Prof Jones said the closure would increase the number of “outliers” in the health system — people not in a ward appropriate to their health needs, such as elderly people with chronic medical conditions being put in spare beds in surgical recovery wards.
He noted a study at Flinders Medical Centre in 2012 found a 40 per cent increases in the death rate in outliers compared to “inliers” who were put in wards appropriate to their needs.
As revealed in The Advertiser on Monday, senior SA Health clinician Associate Professor Chris Zeitz wrote a memo to colleagues calling for a reversal of moves to increase the number of outliers by closing general medical beds, saying: “patients have a much safer hospital stay and are more likely to be discharged alive if they are admitted to their home ward.”
Prof Jones said the RAH data analysing deaths between July 2015 and August 2016 by wards showed a death rate of 7.6 per cent among outliers compared to 5.3 per cent among inliers.
I believe on the basis of information and data that senior doctors have assessed that there will be an additional two to three deaths a month at the RAH,” Prof Jones said.
“It is a scandal.”
Prof Jones said the data shows cost cutting under Transforming Health is “putting lives at risk.”
Mr Wade called on Premier Jay Weatherill to intervene to scrap Transforming Health.
“This is two extra deaths a month, 24 lives a year that could be saved,” he said.
Transforming Health Ambassador Professor Dorothy Keefe released a statement saying:
“We’re currently working intensively with the clinicians at the Royal Adelaide Hospital to reconfigure the beds in existing wards to minimise the number of outliers.”
Prof Jones said the source wished to remain anonymous, adding: “Clinicians are scared to speak publicly because they fear their careers will be jeopardised — they see Prof John Horowitz spoke out and that he is now suspended.”
Queen Elizabeth Hospital director of cardiology Prof Horowitz — who has publicly criticised Transforming Health changes downgrading the QEH cardiology unit — has been suspended over unspecified ‘allegations of misconduct’.