Steven Miles calls urgent meeting for Gladstone maternity bypass
Health Minister Yvette D’Ath has made changes to the state’s locum rules to help ease the obstetrician shortage in Central Queensland. It comes after a meeting was called between Ms D’Ath and the department’s director-general.
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The Health Minister has made changes to the government’s locum rules to help ease the obstetrician shortage in Central Queensland.
AMA Queensland President Dr Maria Boulton met Health Minister Yvette D’Ath on Monday to offer solutions to the workforce shortages that have led to maternity unit closures and bypasses for the past six months. The meeting was in addition to an urgent meeting between Ms D’Ath and the department’s Director-General Shaun Drummond.
“A Roundtable is a good idea to find long-term solutions to regional healthcare shortages, but Queensland Health can take action now to bring doctors and nurses into regional and rural centres,” Dr Boulton said.
“It must end its nonsensical restriction on Queensland Health employees taking locum work at Queensland hospitals. If doctors and nurses want to use their leave to do short-term work at other hospitals in our state that desperately need them, let them.
“Queensland doctors are using their personal time to work in NSW hospitals as locums while our own hospitals are left short-staffed.
“Minister D’Ath has advised that obstetricians can now locum in Central Queensland. We welcome this change, but the ban must be lifted for all healthcare workers across the state.
“Queensland Health should also put out a call to its own staff members to find people who are willing to join rosters to work in our overstretched hospitals around the state.
“Queensland Health has the capacity to develop a list of healthcare workers who are prepared and ready to work in maternity units.
“In the longer term, we are reassured that work is under way to create statewide accreditation for doctors, so they can more easily work in different regions.
“We are coming out of a two-year border closure that made it harder to recruit international medical graduates. We need to look at ways to make their pathway into employment easier and support them so they stay.
“Our communities deserve first-class healthcare, and we are working with the government to deliver that with our solutions.”
The meeting came after Dr Boulton described the ongoing central Queensland maternity crisis is “a medical emergency that should not be happening” and that the blame lies squarely with the state health system’s “lack of planning, leadership, resources and funding”.
The change comes after Acting Premier Steven Miles called for an urgent meeting between Ms D’Ath and Mr Drummond, which was also taking place Monday evening to review Gladstone Hospital’s ongoing maternity bypass and investigate what action is required to return safe birthing to the region.
Acting Premier Steven Miles said no one believed it was acceptable that a town the size of Gladstone did not have a sufficient range of maternity services.
It comes after this publication reported expectant mums from Gladstone were so fearful of travelling to Rockhampton to give birth that they were demanding elective C-sections, and that the crisis had been labelled “a national disgrace”.
Between January 1 and July 7 last year, Queensland Health recorded 30 elective caesarean births in Gladstone.
Since the full maternity bypass began on July 8, the hospital has recorded 20 elective C-sections up to January 13, it says.
But state Health Minister Yvette D’Ath only allowed those planned procedures to resume three months ago, on October 14.
Gladstone, which looked after 900 women antenatally last year, is now offering elective C-sections but on limited days as other women continue to be sent to Rockhampton, the new epicentre of maternity in the region.
Mr Miles confirmed he had asked Health Minister Yvette D‘Ath to convene a meeting Monday afternoon with the Director General to assess all the steps that had been taken to return services to Gladstone and investigate whether there was additional support Queensland Health could provide.
“It’s so we can assess all the steps that have been undertaken to return sufficient maternity services to Gladstone and to see if there is additional support to CQHHS so they can bolster those services,” Mr Miles said.
“Everybody wants to see that Queensland women, especially in larger towns like Gladstone, are able to access the services they need.
“The first and most important priority in delivering those services is the safety of those mums and their children so the services need to be delivered safely with a safe level of staffing.”
Mr Miles said he had asked for the meeting to ensure “no stone had been left unturned” to improve the services.
On Sunday, the Acting Premier confirmed four obstetricians had been secured for the Central Queensland Hospital and Health Service but could not say how many would be based in Gladstone.
Mr Miles on Monday said the four obstetricians would have staggered starts based on their availability due to practical issues such as finishing up at their previous jobs and moving to Central Queensland.
He confirmed the allocation of doctors to individual hospitals remained the responsibility of the region’s health service, the CQHHS.
Mr Miles said the meeting would discuss what the specific plan was for the four new obstetricians as well as the long-term plan for the continued improvement of maternity services in Central Queensland.
Following calls from doctors for an “emergency summit” to discuss maternity service issues across Queensland, Mr Miles said he would seek advice as to whether such a meeting would be useful.
“Please let me have the chance to meet with the Health Minister and Director General and see exactly what they think is the most useful next step,” he said.
“As I said yesterday, a roundtable won’t create new obstetricians for us, so we want to see what the plans are and how we might be better able to support the CQHHS.”
Following questions about why it took so long to hold such a meeting, Mr Miles said health services were never a case of “set and forget” or ”fixed forever” but it was a constant drive from the government to deliver better services and attract more health professionals to Queensland Health.
Shadow Health Minister Ros Bates queried why it had taken six months for the Palaszczuk Government to “start listening about the shocking situation mothers are facing in Gladstone”.
“It’s unfathomable the Government has only worked out today that the situation is urgent,” Ms Bates said.
“It was urgent more than six months ago when the Gladstone maternity unit shut its doors.
“What on earth has the Health Minister been doing for the last six months?
“Has she never met with her own Department about the Gladstone Birthing Crisis?
“It’s a disgrace this situation has been allowed to drag on for this long, and it’s a complete embarrassment that the Health Minister has had to be dragged to a meeting with her own Director-General by the Acting Premier.
“Is it any wonder the health system is crumbling after eight years of neglect by the Palaszczuk Labor Government?”
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