Parents respond as investigation into Bacchus Marsh Hospital baby death scandal concludes
New details of the probe into the cluster of baby deaths at Bacchus Marsh Hospital can be revealed as tribunal proceedings end.
Victoria
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More than a decade on from the first of 11 preventable deaths of babies at Bacchus Marsh Hospital, Australia’s biggest-ever health investigation drew to a close this week.
The final doctor to be hauled in front of a disciplinary hearing over the horror cluster of baby deaths at the hospital’s maternity unity, this week admitted to her shortcomings as a junior doctor.
Dr Rakhi Basu, who admitted to 15 instances of misconduct most of them involving substandard record keeping, and a senior hospital administrator, Dr Lee Gruner, are both awaiting sanctions from the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
The Herald Sun can reveal the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency investigated more than 100 notifications into 43 doctors, nurses, midwives and hospital administrators.
Only the most blameworthy of those involved in the scandal had to front public tribunal proceedings.
Many of those responsible retired when the scandal emerged, meaning the disciplinary sanctions against them were effectively symbolic.
The record investigation was sparked after this paper revealed in October 2015 that suspicions had been raised over a number of infant deaths at the hospital. Before that, many families had been led to believe their children died unavoidable stillbirths.
AHPRA chief executive Martin Fletcher said the final tribunal hearing this week was a milestone for the families involved.
“The sheer number and complexity of matters identified at Bacchus Marsh Hospital have led to the largest and most wide-ranging examination of a single health service ever undertaken by the regulator,” Mr Fletcher said.
“The lessons learned through investigations into the actions and processes at Djerriwarrh Health Service have not only improved the safety for those attending Bacchus Marsh Hospital but have led to improvements for health systems across Australia.”
Mr Fletcher said he hoped the completion of disciplinary hearings helped bring closure to the families whose babies had died or been hurt at the hospital.
The disciplinary proceedings were part of a patchwork of court cases, coronial inquests and government investigations which publicly exposed most of what went awry at the hospital.
Coroner Jacqui Hawkins looked into just three of the eleven preventable baby deaths, but lacked the jurisdiction to examine the other eight because she cannot investigate stillbirths, even if they could have been prevented by competent doctors and midwives.
A series of government reviews focused on why the deaths of so many babies went undetected for so long.
The chair of one of the reviews, Dr Stephen Duckett, put it most simply when he wrote in 2016 that the deaths were “an unmistakeable wake-up call for the Victorian health system”.
“Something went obviously awry,” he wrote in the Medical Journal of Australia.
Law firm Maurice Blackburn represented 25 families whose babies died or suffered significant, preventable injuries at the hospital.
The firm’s medical negligence principal Dimitra Dubrow told the Herald Sun the pain of the tragedies caused by the hospital continued today.
“(The pain) started when parents were dismissed when they asked about their babies being born still, or dying, and continued as they learnt, completely out of the blue, and for some, many years later, that they had not been provided with the obstetric care they deserved and that the death was preventable,” she said.
“While some who suffered loss were compensated, this does not change the damage and pain that has been caused.
“For people to have a chance at achieving something like healing and to be able to move on, these issues need to be dealt with much more swiftly.”
Ms Dubrow said the slow moving legal system had made it difficult for some families to move on from the tragedies.
“While it takes time to achieve individual accountability through regulatory action and should involve great care to ensure fairness, occurring so many years after the events impacts everyone involved and retraumatises those who have already suffered so much,” she said.
‘That’s what hurts the most’
Eloise McMillan would have turned 11 yesterday.
Her mum, Natasha and dad, Ben, spent years carrying the guilt that their daughter died in the final hours of pregnancy.
It wasn’t until 2015 – when Eloise would have been four – that they found out their daughter was a victim of one of Australia’s worst medical scandals, the cluster of baby deaths at Bacchus Marsh Hospital.
During the 14 years from 2001 to 2015, 11 babies died in “preventable” circumstances, as a result of widespread medical and management incompetence.
Dozens more suffered preventable, life-altering injuries.
Ms McMillan has seen doctors, midwives and hospital administrators walk away with what she describes as “slaps on the wrist”.
“I think that’s what hurts the most … the lack of consequences,” she told the Herald Sun.
The hospital’s notorious former head of obstetrics, Dr Surinder Parhar, was last year disqualified from practising for 12 years – six years after he retired.
One of Ms McMillan’s midwives, Dianne Macrae, was in 2018 issued a formal reprimand and agreed to never work as a nurse again. She too had already retired.
“They’re all just retired. They’re all just living their lives,” Ms McMillan said. “They have got their families and their grandchildren. We grieve everyday.”
In what Ms McMillan describes as an insult, the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal called the Bacchus Marsh babies by a series of anonymous numbers and letters.
The investigation into the scandal moved so slowly, and was kept a secret from the public for so long, that Ms McMillan gave birth to two subsequent children, Elodie, now 7, and Annika, now 9, at Bacchus Marsh.
“When I think back at that, I put their lives at risk,” Ms McMillan said.
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