Eminent cardiologist Professor John Horowitz unloads on SA Health’s ‘bullying bureaucrats’

An eminent doctor says the “disastrous bungling” of SA Health has led to a dysfunctional culture of bullying that’s driving talented clinicians to leave our state.

A culture of bureaucratic bullying is speeding a brain drain of talented clinicians heading interstate and overseas, eminent cardiologist John Horowitz claims.

Professor Horowitz has previously made headlines for speaking out publicly about downgrades to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital under Labor’s Transforming Health program.

He has now written an open letter to Premier Steven Marshall saying the Liberal government is following the same path and is refusing to address “a bureaucratic cult of personal abuse and bullying” within SA Health.

Prof Horowitz says a conga line of respected clinicians have left the state.

Professor John Horowitz has written a scathing letter to Premier Steven Marshall.

He lamented the loss of former department heads Dr Ral Antic (Respiratory, Royal Adelaide Hospital), Professor Brian Smith (Respiratory, Queen Elizabeth Hospital) and Professor Steve Nicholls (Cardiology, SAHMRI/RAH) as part of the brain drain.

He also identified the loss of cardiologists Associate Professor Aaron Sverdlov and Associate Professor Kuljit Singh, pharmacist and scientist Doan Ngo, renal transplant specialist Associate Professor Natasha Rogers and coronary expert Dr Rustem Dautov.

The individual circumstances of each of their departures are not known, however there is no suggestion they were involved in any bullying, whether as a perpetrator or a victim. The Advertiser is attempting to contact the departed specialists.

“These losses are dwarfed by resignations of very many disillusioned doctors, nurses and scientists over the past two years,” his letter states.

“Transforming Health principles remain in place under your government. It is planned that gynaecology services at the QEH will close, cardiology staffing numbers have been seriously cut and we will only have one cath lab in the new building.

“Your government has achieved something unique – you pointed out where the pit lay, promised to fill it in, but instead jumped right into it.”

SA Health and Central Adelaide Local Health Network have since provided this response.

Prof Horowitz’s spray comes after Adjunct Professor John Mendoza was sacked as mental health and prison health services director at Central Adelaide Local Health Network after publicly criticising SA Health officials.

He claimed the state’s mental health system was “unsustainable, understaffed and dysfunctional”.

SA Health established a hotline to report bullying and harassment in 2019 after claims by then Australian Medical Association SA president Dr Chris Moy that it was rife.

The inflammatory letter comes as Prof Horowitz wrestles with bureaucrats in efforts to continue landmark research, supported by Heart Foundation grants.

These include the role of Takotsubo (“Broken Heart”) Syndrome in deaths during surgery, an angina treatment and how lack of hydrogen sulphide, or “rotten egg gas”, in the tissues and blood is a factor in coronary artery spasm.

His breakthrough work on coronary artery spasm, including a new treatment, has just been published in a prestigious international medical journal.

Fifi Kemp, 71, of Wayville, said the medication changed her life after suffering from coronary artery spasm since 1998.

“It was like magic, it totally amazed me,” she said.

“It worked almost immediately after I started on it last week and it has changed my life.”