Transforming Health red tape at Modbury Hospital ‘risks lives’

SURGEONS at the Modbury Hospital must be given clear permission to perform surgery that saves live or organs rather than being forced to send patients elsewhere, the Opposition says.

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SURGEONS at the Modbury Hospital must be given clear permission to perform surgery that saves live or organs rather than being forced to send patients elsewhere, the Opposition says.

The Government has insisted the hospital was “capable of providing emergency assessment and treatment to all patients presenting to them”, despite concerns raised that some who arrived at Modbury were being moved on for treatment and receiving poorer health outcomes.

Flinders University Emeritus Professor Warren Jones said he had been told by senior doctors that State Government health reforms force patient referrals even if it compromises care.

“Directions from SA Health management have dramatically increased the risk to patients created by the downgrading of the Modbury Hospital by instructing surgeons that they cannot perform

emergency surgery even in life or organ-saving situations,” Prof Jones said.

“Under existing Transforming Health rules, emergency surgery is no longer performed at Modbury. All cases requiring such surgery are transferred to the Lyell McEwin Hospital.

“Several recent cases have demonstrated that this may severely compromise the eventual treatment.”

Prof Jones said they included a man losing a testicle which may have been saved with immediate surgery.

He said a senior surgeon recently wrote to the administration of the Northern Adelaide Local Health Network and was told no emergency surgery would be done at Modbury.

“It is intolerable that surgeons are forced by administrative edict to abrogate their duty of

care to patients, against the dictates of their professional ethical standards,” Prof Jones said.

An SA Health spokesman said: “Both Modbury and Lyell McEwin hospitals continue to have Emergency Departments, staffed by emergency medicine specialists, capable of providing emergency assessment and treatment to all patients presenting to them.”

“As has always been the case, any patient who presents to Modbury will be assessed and treated by emergency clinicians and if they need ongoing specialist care not available there they’ll be stabilised before being transferred to another hospital,” the spokesman said.

“The Modbury Hospital’s Emergency Department has continued to provide emergency care 24/7.”

Opposition health spokesman Stephen Wade said the Government was “completely out of touch with the primary responsibility of a health service — to save life and minimise injury”.

“It is bad enough that Labor has crippled the Modbury Emergency Department by

withdrawing emergency surgery, but to say that surgeons cannot provide emergency surgery

which could save a life or an organ increases the risk dramatically,” he said.