Health Minister rejects public petition to sack Wide Bay Health board

A Bundaberg Hospital patient advocate fears an attitude of ‘nothing to see here’ is continuing as pleas for the hospital and health service board’s sacking is rejected.

Pateint advocate Beryl Crosby said the Minister’s response is an attempt at “covering up what is happening at the hospital”.

Queensland’s health Minister has rejected a petition calling for the dismissal of the Wide Bay Hospital and Health Service board for failures that patient advocates say are “costing lives”.

The petition called for the dismissal of the service’s board and chief executive for several reasons including claims of long wait times and unsafe patient and facility management practices.

Patient advocate Beryl Crosby listed the petition in December 2022 and it received 887 signatures before it closed on February 16, 2023.

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Health Minister Yvette D’Ath said in a response to the petition on March 23 that she would not make a recommendation to the Government to dismiss the board, because it would not be in the public interest.

Health Minister Yvette D’Ath declined to recommend the dismissal of the Wide Bay Hospital and Health Service board.

Mrs D’Ath defended the performance of the region’s hospital and health service, saying it is delivering “high quality patient care.”

“WBHHS Emergency Departments (ED) provide 24 hour per day, seven day per week services and continues to deliver high quality patient care to the community,” she said.

“Wide Bay, and other HHSs, have seen an increase in the complexity of patients presenting for care at EDs, this includes an increase in clinical acuity.

“Where higher than usual emergency presentations are experienced, escalation actions are implemented to allow hospitals to redistribute resources accordingly and support people to have timely access to care.”

Mrs Crosby said Mrs D‘Ath’s response to the petition was an attempt at “covering up what is happening at the hospital”.

Patient advocate Beryl Crosby regularly receives complaints about Bundaberg Hospital.

“The (response) basically says what they always say – nothing to see here,” Mrs Crosby said.

“They talk about public continuing to get safe quality health care, so they’re not even acknowledging all the complaints that have gone in.”

Mrs Crosby estimated she had received complaints from about 40 patients this year and “hundreds” in 2022.

Complaints include long wait times for elective surgery or in the emergency department, and medication errors.

“If all these people are complaining about waitlists blowing out, and we’ve got people waiting in emergency departments for eight or nine hours – when does it become not in the public interest?,” Mrs Crosby said.

Mrs Crosby cited a case currently before the coroner of an elderly patient hospitalised from a fall in a nursing home.

Beryl Crosby’s petition calling for the sacking of the Wide Bay Hospital and Health Service received almost 900 signatures.

She said the patient was placed in a Covid ward at Bundaberg Hospital despite not being diagnosed with Covid, and died 11 days later from multiple medication errors and a lack of care.

“Reading her medical records was like reading a horror story – the things that happened and the things they didn’t do,” Mrs Crosby said.

“The buck stops with management – it’s costing lives.”

Mrs Crosby believes that the higher than usual emergency presentations referred to by Mrs D’Ath are due to patients returning to the emergency department after being discharged before being properly treated.

Mrs Crosby called for all patients who have experienced substandard care to make an official complaint.

“I wish that every one who had a complaint … would actually pick up the phone to clinical governance at the hospital and make a complaint,” she said.

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Bundaberg Hospital has the worst emergency department wait times in the state, with less than half the patients seen within the clinically recommended time frame.

According to Wide Bay Hospital and Health Service annual reports the service received 1,373 complaints in the 2020-2021 financial year, an increase from 1,340 for 2019-2020.

Only 22 complaints from patients related to the Human Rights Act introduced in 2020 were reported in the 2021-2022 annual report, along with 111 human rights complaints received from staff.