Bundaberg hospital faces scrutiny over patient mistreatment

Bundaberg’s much touted new public hospital may be scaled back under a review of all health projects being undertaken by the LNP, as fresh claims are made about patient treatment and staff fears at the hospital.

Labor MP Tom Smith and opposition spokesman for health Mark Bailey at the Bundaberg Hospital onThursday, March 20, 2025.

Health Minister Tim Nicholls did not rule out the possibility that Bundaberg’s much touted new public hospital may be scaled back under a review of all health projects being undertaken by the LNP, as fresh claims were made about patient treatment and staff fears at the hospital.

Bundaberg Labor MPs Tom Smith and Mark Bailey said on Thursday they’d been stopped from entering the hospital during the week amid claims of poor patient care and a “culture of fear”.

Mr Smith and Mr Bailey, the opposition spokesman for health and ambulance services, said they had gone to the hospital after Mr Bailey received complaints from hospital staff.

Bundaberg Labor MPs Tom Smith and Mark Bailey said on Thursday they’d been stopped from entering the hospital during the week amid claims of poor patient care and a “culture of fear”.

They are not the first complaints about care at the hospital to go public, with a number of complaints made, investigated and publicised in the past few years, under Labor party stewardship.

Work is already underway on the new $1.2billion Bundaberg Hospital.

Mr Bailey told media on Thursday he had received complaints from staff concerned about patient care, and cited the LNP’s real-time data initiative as contributing to a “culture of fear” among medical practitioners there.

The real-time data initiative involves technology delivering real-time health data for key health metrics, including the number of available hospital beds, patients waiting for treatment and busiest times at EDs.

In one case, Mr Bailey said staff claimed they were directed to put a 94-year-old woman, who had been waiting some time in the Emergency Department, in a corridor next to dirty linen.

Photos supplied to Labor MP Tom Smith’s office by a Bundaberg Hospital employee show the corridor where a 94-year-old patient was told to wait for treatment. Mr Smith said the staff refused to comply with this direction at the time.

Hospital staff claim the decision to move the elderly patient was made to avoid mandatory reporting to the director general once the 24-hour wait time had been exceeded.

A WBHHS spokeswoman said on Friday the Bundaberg Hospital’s priority was “ensuring patients receive the right care at the right time and in the right place”.

“The area shown in the picture is a designated storage space, not a patient care area,” they said.

“We are committed to maintaining appropriate spaces for safe and effective patient treatment.”

Mr Smith also said paramedics were told to move patients into a busy waiting room during a rush by a bureaucrat watching hospital footage down in Brisbane.

The fresh claims of patient mistreatment come after the future of Bundaberg’s new hospital was thrown into question during a fiery exchange in parliament last week.

Mr Smith said Toowoomba LNP MP Trevor Watt’s, the Assistant Minister to the Premier, said in Parliament the money for the new Bundaberg Hospital was not available, and a video of Mr Watts speaking seems to back that up.

The land for the new hospital has already been cleared and preparations are being made for the foundations.

The NewsMail reached out to Mr Watts’ office for clarity on that statement this week and was told to take the question to Health Minister Tim Nicholls.

A spokesman for Mr Nicholls office said the state government was “committed to delivering new and expanded hospitals and health facilities including the new Bundaberg Hospital as planned under the Capital Expansion Program (CEP)”.

But he said the new hospital would be scrutinised as part of the analysis of all hospital expansions by a team led by hospital infrastructure specialist Sam Sangster.

“Projects like expanding hospitals in Townsville and Mackay, and building three new facilities at Coomera, Bundaberg and Toowoomba, will be saved from Labor’s financial mismanagement by applying independent scrutiny to the program in the early months of the Crisafulli Government,” the minister’s spokesman said.

“The program is facing a blowout of more than $6 billion and there are estimates this may double if we do nothing.

“We owe it to Queenslanders to deliver the best healthcare infrastructure and services possible while ensuring their taxpayer dollars are spent responsibly.”

Wide Bay Hospital and Health Services was also contacted for a response to the claims, but did not respond before publication.

Originally published as Bundaberg hospital faces scrutiny over patient mistreatment