Senior bosses at a taxpayer-funded health charity in regional NSW spent more than three-quarters of a million dollars on new cars and all-expenses-paid trips to New Zealand, Canada and Las Vegas while turning away patients waiting weeks to receive healthcare.
Staff at CTG Aboriginal Health Services, which receives more than $10 million in state and federal funding annually on top of nearly $5 million in non-government revenue, say they are infuriated with the charity, which is also facing allegations that its board limited access to medical abortions at its Dubbo clinic and did not properly investigate a staff member who inappropriately accessed patient records.
CTG Aboriginal Health Services chief executive Phil Naden (far right), executive officer Beau Ewers (third from right) and chairman Brendon Harris (second from left) at the Dawg House sports Bar in Las Vegas.Credit:
Just one full-time GP remains at the Dubbo clinic after more than half of 20 staff members resigned at the end of last year following a vote of no confidence in the board and chief executive Phil Naden. The charity employs 67 people across its clinics in Dubbo, Coonamble and Gilgandra.
In a letter signed by 10 staff members and sent to the board in August last year, staff expressed outrage that Naden and senior board members used the charity’s funds to travel to New Zealand, India, Canada and the NRL opening round in Las Vegas, while new patients were turned away from the clinic because of staff shortages and rising demand.
“I feel like headbutting the wall most days because we can’t provide the services that our community needs,” one former employee told the Herald, speaking anonymously for fear of reprisals.
The charity’s latest financial report reveals its travel budget has grown from $30,000 to $408,000 in the past five years, while vehicle costs have doubled in the same period to almost $350,000.
Naden declined to comment. Chair Brendon Harris said the service had clear protocols to ensure any travel “aligns with business objectives and internal policy”.
“CAHS [Coonamble Aboriginal Health Service] is committed to improving the lives of Aboriginal people and the wider community it serves,” Harris said in a statement.
“We are confident that our internal processes and governance frameworks provide the necessary oversight and accountability to support appropriate decision-making.”
Aboriginal community-controlled health organisations (ACCHOs) aim to provide culturally appropriate and holistic healthcare to thousands of Indigenous Australians at more than 500 clinics nationwide. Both advocates and the federal government say they are central to efforts to close the gap in health outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
But the service breakdown in Dubbo threatens to derail efforts to improve the health of some 14,000 Indigenous people in the region, who suffer from heart disease, kidney disease and lung conditions at rates higher than the state and national average.
It has also led staff, patients and advocates to question whether there is enough oversight of an organisation receiving more than $10 million in state and federal funds each year.
“Some of these red flags, I wouldn’t call them red flags now. They’re explosions,” said Tim Horan, a former chief executive of the service and a former mayor of Coonamble Shire Council.
Travel costs blow out
From a lavish corporate box high up in Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium, some of the charity’s most senior leaders watched Manly and South Sydney make history in the first game of the NRL’s Sin City experiment.
After seven tries, three lead changes and a try-saving ankle tap, the Sea Eagles prevailed, and the party inside the corporate box continued on to Zouk Nightclub on the famous Las Vegas Boulevard.
Back in Dubbo, staff were growing frustrated with their bosses, who had travelled to North America to attend an Aboriginal finance officers conference in Winnipeg, Canada. It was a work trip funded by the charity, but when staff attempted to contact their colleagues, they received automated replies stating they were on annual leave.
Harris said the board approved the trip as a development opportunity for senior leadership, and the Vegas stopover was “part of a package deal”.
“No funding from any government contract was used in relation to this trip,” Harris said.
A photo posted on Instagram of CTG Aboriginal Health Services chief executive Phil Naden (left) and executive officer Beau Ewers (right) in a corporate box at Allegiant Stadium, Las Vegas.Credit:
But staff were not happy when they opened social media to see photos of Naden, their chief executive, and executive officer Beau Ewers drinking at the “Dawg House” sports bar in Las Vegas. Nor were they pleased to see their bosses living it up in the corporate box while they struggled to find appointments for patients back home.
Corporate boxes at Allegiant Stadium for the 2024 NRL opener cost about $12,500 for eight people, or $1500 per person, a rugby league source said.
“People are suffering in our community … while they [the CEO and board members] are tripping around doing this and that,” said one former employee.
For disgruntled employees, the Vegas trip was the latest example of what they saw as increasingly unjustifiable spending on non-clinical expenses.
Executive officer Beau Ewers and chief executive Phil Naden with new CTG Aboriginal Health vehicles.Credit:
Executives, including Naden, have also travelled to New Zealand to meet Maori leaders, and India to promote an app for his preventative health organisation “Fair Dinkum Choices”. Harris said these trips were also approved by the board and funded by non-government revenue.
In 2019, the year Naden succeeded Horan as chief executive, the service spent $32,000 on travel and $153,000 on vehicle costs.
By June 2024, annual travel expenses had ballooned to $408,000 – a 12-fold increase in five years. Vehicle costs doubled to $343,000 in the same period.
Both significantly outpaced revenue growth, which grew 30 per cent from $11.6 million in 2019 to $15.4 million in 2024.
Almost 60 per cent of the service’s $15.4 million revenue last year came from the Commonwealth, including $6.8 million from the Department of Health.
Another $1.4 million came from the NSW government, including a $132,000 grant announced by Health Minister Ryan Park last year towards the “Fair Dinkum Choices” preventative health campaign.
The three clinics made a combined $2.9 million in Medicare rebates last financial year.
The service delivered a surplus in its last financial report. Former employees told the Herald they grew frustrated that so much money was spent on travel while frontline services were missing and staff vacancies remained unfilled.
“It’s a lot of money that we could have been spending on new equipment, or a new GP or another nurse,” said one former employee.
Rumblings of discontent
In June, NSW chief health officer Dr Kerry Chant toured Dubbo Aboriginal Medical Service, operated by CTG Aboriginal Health, where she shared positive Indigenous vaccination statistics for the region, according to the service’s social media posts.
However, chronic staff vacancies and unrest have severely blunted the practice’s ability to deliver those vaccines, according to five current and former staff members who spoke to the Herald.
The service employed seven full-time GPs at the end of 2019. But just as the COVID-19 pandemic reached Australia and health experts were raising fears about the virus getting into vulnerable Indigenous communities, six doctors were made redundant – leaving Dr Amy-Lea Perrin, a Wiradjuri woman born and raised in Dubbo, as the only fully qualified GP at the service.
NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant (centre) on a tour of Dubbo Aboriginal Medical Service on June 21, 2024.Credit:
Perrin declined to comment for this story. She told NITV News in 2021 that she was the only person able to administer vaccines at the clinic and a shortage of doctors in the region was hampering efforts to boost vaccination rates.
“It is very difficult to try and balance the vaccination clinics and normal day-to-day work that we [do] as GPs,” she said.
Harris said the six doctors who left before the pandemic decided not to accept full-time employment during the restructure, and were replaced with three full-time doctors.
But only one of those GPs works at the Dubbo clinic, staff said, with the other two working full-time in Gilgandra and Coonamble.
The service has also contracted locum GPs to cover appointments for weeks at a time, but staff said this was far from ideal for patients needing continuous care.
“It’s not great for long-term care in our chronic patients,” said one.
At one point last year, waitlists for a normal appointment blew out to six weeks, two former employees said.
Harris said the clinic’s manager made the decision to close the books without consulting the board or Naden, who “ordered the decision to be reversed”.
“The books are currently open to new patients,” he said.
When the Herald called the practice earlier this month, a receptionist said their books remained closed to new patients. Three days later, after questions were sent to Naden, staff were told they were now opening the books to new patients.
Harris said a shortage of nurses had led to a pause on accepting new patients. The Dubbo clinic has not had a midwife or a child and family nurse since 2020, despite financial records showing the service received $767,019 for “children and family services” in the last financial year.
One former healthcare worker said the lack of nursing staff in particular had limited the clinic’s ability to immunise Indigenous children in the community.
“We’ve had to cancel immunisations because there’s a lack of staff,” the former employee said. “We secure this funding, and then we’re not providing that care to our community.”
The service had 67 employees last financial year. At least 10 staff at the Dubbo clinic have departed the service since signing the vote of no-confidence letter in August.
The Herald has spoken to three other staff who have either formally resigned or are absent indefinitely on stress leave.
Eight current and former staff shared concerns that clients, who did not trust mainstream health services, had nowhere else to go.
“A lot of our patients actively avoid the hospital,” said one. “We’ve had a lot of issues with the local [public] health service over the years, so quite a lot of our patients will actually come to us, even if they’re critically unwell. We need enough staff to actually look after them.”
Ethical concerns
In the August letter, staff alleged the board prohibited GPs from prescribing the MS-2 Step oral abortion medication to patients, and threatened disciplinary action if they disobeyed.
“We had non-medically trained board members saying, ‘Nope, you’re not doing that’,” one staff member said.
Staff also alleged Naden’s son, an Aboriginal health practitioner at the service, inappropriately accessed a colleague’s medical records to gain information about a recent presentation to hospital.
Harris said the matter was referred to the Health Care Complaints Commission and then the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Practice Council, which referred Naden’s son to counselling.
In the August letter, staff demanded more control over the service and said the board’s financial decisions had failed to meet the needs of their patients.
“This has led to [our clinic] stagnating instead of flourishing,” the letter said.
Former chief executive Horan said Dubbo, where about 16.5 per cent of people identify as Indigenous, deserves a functional health service that can deliver for the community.
“The service in Dubbo should be one of the biggest in Australia,” he said. “There are huge priorities out there, and I don’t think they’re being met when you can’t even see a doctor.”
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