Des Houghton: Qld Health debacles mean the buck stops with the Health Minister

Patients dying waiting for an ambulance, a medical records outage and a DNA debacle head the list of the latest major issues plaguing Queensland Health, writes Des Houghton, and while she’s new to the role, the buck stops with Shannon Fentiman.

I do not think it was such a good week for the Labor government, especially for Shannon Fentiman, the Queensland Cabinet’s shining light who is increasingly thrust before the television news cameras ahead of Annastacia Palaszczuk.

As Health Minister, Fentiman was left to apologise after two people died waiting for an ambulance.

Damning figures show Queenslanders are spending up to 10 hours ramped in ambulances outside hospitals, blocked from entry to emergency departments.

And I’m told by a specialist doctor there were more who died we don’t yet know about.

Fentiman, seen by many of the ALP faithful as the premier in waiting, also had the unenviable task of explaining how a State Government computer malfunction crippled the hospital system, when the IT boffins didn’t seem to know either.

The problems happened inside Queensland Health’s digital medical records system known as IeMR, for Integrating electronic Medical Records.

The program was hailed as doing away with the need for hard copy patient charts and forms.

It was introduced at an estimated cost of $1.2bn in 2016, but the Queensland Auditor-General warned three years later that cost overruns were not being properly managed by the Palaszczuk government.

Queensland Health Minister Shannon Fentiman. Picture David Clark

The medical records meltdown caused all sorts of alarm, with some nurses admitting they did not know how to record patients’ details with pen and paper because they had never been taught.

As the avalanche of bad health news continued, Fentiman became more selective about which media conferences she would attend.

Chief Health Officer John Gerrard was put up to explain why transplant patients had fallen ill from fungal infections at Brisbane’s Prince Charles Hospital and whether there was a link to the death of a man at Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital following a bone-marrow transplant.

Dr Muhammad Hussain, 55, died after receiving a heart transplant at the Prince Charles Hospital in Brisbane due to a possible fungal infection. Picture: Supplied

Next Fentiman found her portfolio embroiled in a scandal that will still be playing out long after she has left political life.

Up to 103,000 DNA crime scene samples, many from suspected murderers and rapists, will have to be reanalysed because the method originally used to test them was faulty. That will take years and will have far-reaching implications for
the police and justice system as well as Health.

An inquiry into Queensland’s DNA laboratory within Queensland Health’s Forensic and Scientific Services division found it was “fundamentally flawed”.

Queensland Health Chief Health Officer Dr John Gerrard. Picture: John Gass

So was Fentiman’s response. She tried to brush it aside saying it was time to move on. Try telling that to said victims of sexual violence who are currently going through the drawn-out court processes. The Queensland Sexual Assault Network said delays may force victims to withdraw from proceedings before they get justice.

Fentiman’s blunder highlights other unanswered questions about the lack of accountability in the DNA saga. We do know that Annastacia Palaszczuk was warned of profound failures in DNA testing by a friendly judge and by a journalist at least two years before her ministers acknowledged there was a problem.

Former Courier-Mail journalist Hedley Thomas, now at The Australian, stumbled upon the scandal when compiling his podcast series into the death of 23-year-old stabbing victim Shandee Blackburn.

Prince Charles Hospital, where ransplant patients had fallen ill from fungal infections. Picture: NCA NewsWire / John Gass

Thomas reported the concerns of Kirsty Wright, an independent forensic biologist turned whistleblower. Her brave exposé led to the first inquiry by retired judge Walter Sofronoff. But Dr Wright wasn’t happy with Sofronoff’s findings. She pointed out that scientists who gave evidence remained quiet about Project 13, a system that was so bad it failed to find DNA in a pool of blood in the Mackay gutter where Shandee was stabbed.

At the second inquiry, retired Federal Court judge Annabelle Bennett stopped short of holding any of those scientists to account. Forensic Science Queensland’s new chief executive, Linzi Wilson-Wilde, was cleared to continue overseeing the lab despite the fact she failed to raise the alarm at the Sofronoff inquiry. Hmmm.

Fentiman went out of her way to thank Kirsty Wright for her courageous whistleblowing.

It was another howler. When she was Attorney-General Fentiman dragged her heels on introducing laws to protect whistleblowers.

And when they were introduced, they were inadequate. Under new Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath, protections for whistleblowers and reporters remain in limbo after journalists discovered the shield laws did not apply to coercive hearings by the CCC where they would be made to reveal their sources.

Fentiman was being tripped up by her own history.