20 Feb 2009
Send In Some Trucks
By Scott Mitchell, New Matilda.
City dwellers hold forth on the "Aboriginal problem", but do any of them know what they're talking about? Scott Mitchell on days five and six of his two week intervention
This article is part of newmatilda.com’s Urban Intervention experiment. For more information read this.
Day Five
The beach is free, but I think I'm getting cancer.
So is watching movies at people's houses. Free that is, not cancerous. I do that for most of the day and no-one says anything particularly interesting. I end up staying with someone. It saves me money and time getting home and I can't help but feel like a bit of a bum — because I don't even particularly want to be there. I feel like I'm using people.
Day Six
At the Beach Road Hotel they serve Schnitzels the size of whole chickens with a side of salad. My mate looks up over his bird and says, "Pretty f*cking good for the price". All I can think about is how many loaves of bread and litres of milk $13 buys.
I ask the bartender how much a gin and tonic is, he replies that it's $7.30 and moves to start making it, I say "I'll have one pink lemonade". He still thinks I'm ordering a G&T and when I clarify he looks completely confused — I'd like to think that he's confused at the idea of refusing to buy a drink for $7.30, but more likely he's confounded by the childish, emasculating choice. The lemonade is $2.30.
My friend Chris has ambitions to be an ambitious lieutenant in young Labor. Like every member of the ALP he's come to the conclusion that everyone else in the ALP is "f*cked".
Yet it is with stereotypical ALP swagger, confidence and self-righteousness that he proscribes his solution for Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory: "They should just have big trucks, like those mobile clinics" he imparts, "It would cost a lot, everyone says 'you're just throwing money at it', but sometimes it's worth it. You should have big trucks, with security and properly trained, high level doctors to look after these people instead of shipping out nursing students straight out of college".
The more that I read about the Northern Territory and the Intervention, the more absurd I find every argument, anecdote and opinion which seeks to address the "Aboriginal problem", without context. Even if you discount the different language groups and cultures which cover the vast swathes of land targeted by the Intervention there is enormous diversity. Few communities look the same. There are communities with serious social problems, just as there are communities with few. There are communities in which English is barely spoken, and some where everyone is fluent. There are different levels of education, infrastructure, health, housing, employment and crime all across the Territory and yet every community has been treated exactly the same — they have been treated as the worst case scenario. It's truly astonishing.
Both sides of the argument as to whether the Intervention has Aboriginal support also fall into the trap of assuming there's a singular voice on the issue.
The final Emergency Response Review Board report states that, "Many people with whom the board came into contact believed that income management did provide a new opportunity to manage their income". Despite this, a survey they conducted found that 85 per cent of respondents believe the Intervention was having a negative impact, while 90 per cent had problems receiving only half their welfare payments in cash. The report goes on to say that the "Testimony of many Aboriginal people, especially women... [supports the belief that many] families and children have benefited from income management".
Yet, the Review Board's survey, which was answered by more women than men found that, "No women reported an overall positive position regarding the Intervention changes", and that, "Of those few who do like using store cards, they are more likely to be male. Over 90 per cent of females disliked using store cards."
We watch The One Armed Boxer versus The Master of the Flying Guillotine and suddenly it's 1:00am. I'm too late to make the last train. Both my friends offer to pay for the cab fare, but I just go out and pay for it myself. It's a particularly depressing cab ride as I realise that despite trying to rein in my spending all weekend I only have about $50 dollars unquarantined with more than a week left.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
DENTISTS LASH DENTICARE
Red News Readers,
Those dentists already attacking the proposal for a Denticare Scheme should be consulting their Code of Ethics and their consciences. Speaking out against a scheme that may provide affordable dental care to the 40% of the population who cannot afford it, is one of the most blatant examples of self interst in the health system I have ever heard . These dentists do not know what is going on in Australian society - people living for weeks, months even in dental pain, people living on soft foods for months, years,waiting for access to public dental services, people prescribed antibiotics for a dental infection but no pain relief and so medicating themselves inappropriately, people having no access to dental services after hours and so turning up in emergency departments of public hospital begging for help.
The Dental profession needs to get down off their well heeled high horse and start addressing the real needs of those in Australian society who cannot afford their exorbitant fees. I recently spent $400 on the reconstruction of one tooth. I could have $10,000 worth of orthodontic work done, but I don't have the funds for that. Fortunately I can afford private dental care, but there are many in our community who can't and deserve more consideration from those who call themselves dental professionals.
Jenny Haines
Dentists lash out at free care plan
Mark Metherell, smh
February 17, 2009
DENTISTS have condemned a Medicare-style system for free universal dental care being considered by the Rudd Government as impractical, and massively expensive.
The Denticare plan is part of the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission's sweeping makeover in hospital and health services, including for indigenous people, the aged and young people with mental illness.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Tell us your experiences of visiting the dentist? Are dentists too expensive? Message 0424 SMS SMH (+61 424 767 764) or email us with your stories. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Denticare would be financed by a 0.75 per cent income levy.
In its interim report released yesterday, the commission raised three options for reshaping state and federal governments' running of the health system.
The proposals range from an improved version of the existing system, through to the development of a European-style social insurance scheme financed by the Commonwealth under which people could choose from health fund plans which would purchase services on their behalf.
The commission is to decide which scheme it would favour in its final report to the Government expected by midyear.
The Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, said the Government was happy to have a debate about the possibility of a new tax to finance Denticare, which she described as a "fairly radical proposal … but we are interested in the community's response to this".
But Dr Neil Hewson, the president of the Australian Dental Association, representing private dentists, slammed the Denticare proposal, saying it could nearly double to $11 billion the cost of dentistry to the government and individual patients.
"The recommendation … for a universal Denticare scheme is impractical, nonsensical, overly simplistic and flies in the face of much of the deliberations that have taken place on this issue over the past decade," he said.
"It shows no appreciation of the real problems facing dental delivery in Australia."
The association believed the Government should target the 35 per cent of the community who could not access or afford proper dental care and said it would be fiscally irresponsible to introduce a universal scheme for dentistry.
The commission has also proposed an indigenous health authority to upgrade care indigenous Australians get, similar to the special arrangements made for veterans.
It has also called for schemes to boost health funding for rural communities, and for the introduction of more community services to counter mental illness among young people.
The commission strongly urged the introduction of individually controlled electronic personal health records which the commission's chairwoman, Dr Christine Bennett, described as "one of the most important systemic opportunities we have".
The report said there was an urgent need to tackle inequities in health status and outcomes and lack of access to health services for many groups in Australia. For indigenous Australians it proposed an increase in funding to reflect the much greater health needs.
A National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Authority would purchase services specifically for indigenous patients and focus on results to ensure high quality and timely access to services.
The chief executive of the Australian Health Insurance Association, Dr Michael Armitage, said insurers would consider the dental care proposal and other recommendations and compile a response to the reform commission.
"The industry would support any plan to improve access to dental care for Australians but it is about more than that - it's about quality, safety and achieving better health outcomes - not just health financing," he said.
The Opposition's health spokesman, Peter Dutton, said taxpayers would pay billions of dollars in extra taxes for a national Denticare scheme.
"Almost 11 million Australians or 50 per cent of the population would pay more than they currently do to meet the costs of the Denticare scheme," he said.
The Age
Those dentists already attacking the proposal for a Denticare Scheme should be consulting their Code of Ethics and their consciences. Speaking out against a scheme that may provide affordable dental care to the 40% of the population who cannot afford it, is one of the most blatant examples of self interst in the health system I have ever heard . These dentists do not know what is going on in Australian society - people living for weeks, months even in dental pain, people living on soft foods for months, years,waiting for access to public dental services, people prescribed antibiotics for a dental infection but no pain relief and so medicating themselves inappropriately, people having no access to dental services after hours and so turning up in emergency departments of public hospital begging for help.
The Dental profession needs to get down off their well heeled high horse and start addressing the real needs of those in Australian society who cannot afford their exorbitant fees. I recently spent $400 on the reconstruction of one tooth. I could have $10,000 worth of orthodontic work done, but I don't have the funds for that. Fortunately I can afford private dental care, but there are many in our community who can't and deserve more consideration from those who call themselves dental professionals.
Jenny Haines
Dentists lash out at free care plan
Mark Metherell, smh
February 17, 2009
DENTISTS have condemned a Medicare-style system for free universal dental care being considered by the Rudd Government as impractical, and massively expensive.
The Denticare plan is part of the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission's sweeping makeover in hospital and health services, including for indigenous people, the aged and young people with mental illness.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Tell us your experiences of visiting the dentist? Are dentists too expensive? Message 0424 SMS SMH (+61 424 767 764) or email us with your stories. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Denticare would be financed by a 0.75 per cent income levy.
In its interim report released yesterday, the commission raised three options for reshaping state and federal governments' running of the health system.
The proposals range from an improved version of the existing system, through to the development of a European-style social insurance scheme financed by the Commonwealth under which people could choose from health fund plans which would purchase services on their behalf.
The commission is to decide which scheme it would favour in its final report to the Government expected by midyear.
The Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, said the Government was happy to have a debate about the possibility of a new tax to finance Denticare, which she described as a "fairly radical proposal … but we are interested in the community's response to this".
But Dr Neil Hewson, the president of the Australian Dental Association, representing private dentists, slammed the Denticare proposal, saying it could nearly double to $11 billion the cost of dentistry to the government and individual patients.
"The recommendation … for a universal Denticare scheme is impractical, nonsensical, overly simplistic and flies in the face of much of the deliberations that have taken place on this issue over the past decade," he said.
"It shows no appreciation of the real problems facing dental delivery in Australia."
The association believed the Government should target the 35 per cent of the community who could not access or afford proper dental care and said it would be fiscally irresponsible to introduce a universal scheme for dentistry.
The commission has also proposed an indigenous health authority to upgrade care indigenous Australians get, similar to the special arrangements made for veterans.
It has also called for schemes to boost health funding for rural communities, and for the introduction of more community services to counter mental illness among young people.
The commission strongly urged the introduction of individually controlled electronic personal health records which the commission's chairwoman, Dr Christine Bennett, described as "one of the most important systemic opportunities we have".
The report said there was an urgent need to tackle inequities in health status and outcomes and lack of access to health services for many groups in Australia. For indigenous Australians it proposed an increase in funding to reflect the much greater health needs.
A National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Authority would purchase services specifically for indigenous patients and focus on results to ensure high quality and timely access to services.
The chief executive of the Australian Health Insurance Association, Dr Michael Armitage, said insurers would consider the dental care proposal and other recommendations and compile a response to the reform commission.
"The industry would support any plan to improve access to dental care for Australians but it is about more than that - it's about quality, safety and achieving better health outcomes - not just health financing," he said.
The Opposition's health spokesman, Peter Dutton, said taxpayers would pay billions of dollars in extra taxes for a national Denticare scheme.
"Almost 11 million Australians or 50 per cent of the population would pay more than they currently do to meet the costs of the Denticare scheme," he said.
The Age
Monday, February 16, 2009
CHAVEZ WINS REFERENDUM
Chavez wins Venezuela referendum
from Al Jazeera feed on New Matilda, 16.2.09
Venezuela's president has won a referendum to scrap term limits for elected officials, allowing him to seek re-election indefinitely.
Hugo Chavez greeted cheering supporters at the presidential palace in Caracas on Sunday, moments after the country's electoral commission chief declared victory for the "yes" vote.
"Long live the revolution," shouted Chavez, as he stood pumping his fist on the palace balcony in front of thousands of flag-waving supporters.
After leading supporters in singing the national anthem, he said: "Today we opened wide the gates of the future. Venezuela will not return to its past of indignity."
Tibisay Lucena, the chief of the national electoral council, said that with 94 per cent of the vote counted, 54 per cent had backed the president's proposal - an unbeatable lead.
Festive mood
There was a festive mood on the streets of the capital, as Chavez supporters began celebrating the result.
In depth
Caracas split over Chavez changesIn pictures: Venezuela votesQ&A: Chavez referendumProfile: Hugo ChavezJoin the debate on Venezuela's referendumVideo: Venezuelans to vote on ChavezStudents battle over Venezuela voteVideo: Venezuela votes amid economic woes
"People here are ecstatic," Al Jazeera's Rob Winder, reporting from Chacao district in Caracas, said.
"There are hundreds of people in the street - people are riding around on motorbikes and dancing on the roofs of cars."
Chavez said he received a first message of congratulations from Fidel Castro, Cuba's former president and a mentor of Chavez.
"Dear Hugo, congratulations for you and for your people for a victory that, by its size, is impossible to measure," Castro wrote, according to Chavez.
Venezuela has been divided by the referrendum, which seeks to ammend five articles of the country's constitution to grant the president, mayors, local councilors, legislators and governors unlimited bids for re-election.
The vote was Chavez's second attempt to remove the two-term cap for presidents.
The win means he can seek re-election when his second term in office ends in 2013 and hold the presidency for as long as he continues to win elections.
Without the ammendments, the president is only allowed to hold two consecutive terms, which would mean that Chavez, elected in 1998 and again in 2006, would have to step down at the end of his second mandate.
Opposition defeated
The result is a huge blow for Venezuela's opposition which had made gains in city and state elections last year.
Opposition parties had pinned their hopes on a student movement spearheading the "No is No" vote, a reference to Chavez's failed effort in 2007 to push through constitutional changes to extend his presidency.
Chavez supporters poured on to the streets of Caracas to celebrate the win on Sunday [AFP]
Chavez had previously described winning the vote as key completing his transformation of Venezuela into a socialist state.
His supporters say he has given poor Venezuelans cheap food, free education and quality health care and empowered the poor, after decades of US-backed governments that favored the rich.
But analysts warn that Chavez's social programmes could be hard hit by tumbling oil prices.
"Independently from this referendum Chavez is facing a very acute financial and political crisis in the very near term," Gustavo Coronel, a former board member of the Venezuelan state oil company and an opponent to Chavez, told Al Jazeera. "So far he has been instituting a policy of handouts that have been very good for him. He is very popular among the poor because he has received more than $700bn in the last 10 years," he said.
"[But] the oil prices have plummeted ... I doubt this referendum really means a victory for him in the longer term. I think that, in fact, he might be fighting for his life before the end of the normal term of 2012."
About 100 international observers monitored the vote, but neither the Organisation of American States (OAS) nor the European Union had official observers in Venezuela.
from Al Jazeera feed on New Matilda, 16.2.09
Venezuela's president has won a referendum to scrap term limits for elected officials, allowing him to seek re-election indefinitely.
Hugo Chavez greeted cheering supporters at the presidential palace in Caracas on Sunday, moments after the country's electoral commission chief declared victory for the "yes" vote.
"Long live the revolution," shouted Chavez, as he stood pumping his fist on the palace balcony in front of thousands of flag-waving supporters.
After leading supporters in singing the national anthem, he said: "Today we opened wide the gates of the future. Venezuela will not return to its past of indignity."
Tibisay Lucena, the chief of the national electoral council, said that with 94 per cent of the vote counted, 54 per cent had backed the president's proposal - an unbeatable lead.
Festive mood
There was a festive mood on the streets of the capital, as Chavez supporters began celebrating the result.
In depth
Caracas split over Chavez changesIn pictures: Venezuela votesQ&A: Chavez referendumProfile: Hugo ChavezJoin the debate on Venezuela's referendumVideo: Venezuelans to vote on ChavezStudents battle over Venezuela voteVideo: Venezuela votes amid economic woes
"People here are ecstatic," Al Jazeera's Rob Winder, reporting from Chacao district in Caracas, said.
"There are hundreds of people in the street - people are riding around on motorbikes and dancing on the roofs of cars."
Chavez said he received a first message of congratulations from Fidel Castro, Cuba's former president and a mentor of Chavez.
"Dear Hugo, congratulations for you and for your people for a victory that, by its size, is impossible to measure," Castro wrote, according to Chavez.
Venezuela has been divided by the referrendum, which seeks to ammend five articles of the country's constitution to grant the president, mayors, local councilors, legislators and governors unlimited bids for re-election.
The vote was Chavez's second attempt to remove the two-term cap for presidents.
The win means he can seek re-election when his second term in office ends in 2013 and hold the presidency for as long as he continues to win elections.
Without the ammendments, the president is only allowed to hold two consecutive terms, which would mean that Chavez, elected in 1998 and again in 2006, would have to step down at the end of his second mandate.
Opposition defeated
The result is a huge blow for Venezuela's opposition which had made gains in city and state elections last year.
Opposition parties had pinned their hopes on a student movement spearheading the "No is No" vote, a reference to Chavez's failed effort in 2007 to push through constitutional changes to extend his presidency.
Chavez supporters poured on to the streets of Caracas to celebrate the win on Sunday [AFP]
Chavez had previously described winning the vote as key completing his transformation of Venezuela into a socialist state.
His supporters say he has given poor Venezuelans cheap food, free education and quality health care and empowered the poor, after decades of US-backed governments that favored the rich.
But analysts warn that Chavez's social programmes could be hard hit by tumbling oil prices.
"Independently from this referendum Chavez is facing a very acute financial and political crisis in the very near term," Gustavo Coronel, a former board member of the Venezuelan state oil company and an opponent to Chavez, told Al Jazeera. "So far he has been instituting a policy of handouts that have been very good for him. He is very popular among the poor because he has received more than $700bn in the last 10 years," he said.
"[But] the oil prices have plummeted ... I doubt this referendum really means a victory for him in the longer term. I think that, in fact, he might be fighting for his life before the end of the normal term of 2012."
About 100 international observers monitored the vote, but neither the Organisation of American States (OAS) nor the European Union had official observers in Venezuela.
ONE STOP SHOP HEALTH CENTRES
Red News Readers,
These proposals if implemented properly would certainly improve access to affordable primary health care, but they don't create or fund one more bed in a public hospital. They would in the longer term stop people deteriorating to the point where they need hospital care but the crying need now is for more beds in public hospitals, staffed by skilled and experienced staff, who are adequately resourced, and supported by a more caring and less budget focussed bureaucracy.
Jenny Haines
Proposal for one-stop-shop health centres
Mark Metherell, smh
February 16, 2009
ONE-STOP-SHOP health clinics aimed at reducing reliance on hospitals are proposed by the Rudd Government's reform team as a centrepiece of a federal takeover of community-based health.
The National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission is calling for a radical revamp of Australia's public health services and a bigger federal role in community-based health care, dental services and aged care.
The commission will release a 400-page interim report today containing proposals for a shake-up in health which will be refined in its final report to the Government in the middle of the year.
Some aspects could be developed by late next year.
While the Government-appointed commission will call for a federal takeover of primary care services, the commission is guarded on the issue of federal control of public hospitals, raising it as an "option".
This is despite a pledge by the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, to assume financial control of hospitals if states fail to improve their performance by midyear.
The commission has proposed the establishment of "comprehensive primary health care centres" - a larger-scale version of the Government's plans for 31 GP super clinics - to provide one-stop-shops for care by GPs, nurses, diagnostic services, family and child health and other professionals such as physiotherapists, psychologists and podiatrists.
The commission says the Commonwealth's primary care role should include the takeover of largely state-run community health centres, services such as those for women and children, sexual health and alcohol and drug treatment programs.
Another proposal by the commission is to provide young families and patients with chronic and complex conditions with the option to enrol in a single primary health-care service to improve continuity and co-ordination of care.
The commission says present state-federal funding arrangements impede the provision of "connected, comprehensive primary health care".
"Strong primary health care must also drive quality performance through ensuring the 'right care in the right place', including by reducing avoidable hospital visits and admissions by focusing on early intervention and supported self-management," the report says.
It poses the ideal of a connected health system which responds to changing needs, from infancy, through mental health services for young people, co-ordinated care for those with chronic diseases, and support for frail older people living in their homes.
Handing the Federal Government sole responsibility for primary health-care funding would give clear responsibility and accountability for a coherent national policy with identified goals and strategies supported by adequate funding.
The Australian Medical Association is likely to resist the primary health-care centres. It has previously criticised the quality of such care and says it would compete with GPs' practices.
These proposals if implemented properly would certainly improve access to affordable primary health care, but they don't create or fund one more bed in a public hospital. They would in the longer term stop people deteriorating to the point where they need hospital care but the crying need now is for more beds in public hospitals, staffed by skilled and experienced staff, who are adequately resourced, and supported by a more caring and less budget focussed bureaucracy.
Jenny Haines
Proposal for one-stop-shop health centres
Mark Metherell, smh
February 16, 2009
ONE-STOP-SHOP health clinics aimed at reducing reliance on hospitals are proposed by the Rudd Government's reform team as a centrepiece of a federal takeover of community-based health.
The National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission is calling for a radical revamp of Australia's public health services and a bigger federal role in community-based health care, dental services and aged care.
The commission will release a 400-page interim report today containing proposals for a shake-up in health which will be refined in its final report to the Government in the middle of the year.
Some aspects could be developed by late next year.
While the Government-appointed commission will call for a federal takeover of primary care services, the commission is guarded on the issue of federal control of public hospitals, raising it as an "option".
This is despite a pledge by the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, to assume financial control of hospitals if states fail to improve their performance by midyear.
The commission has proposed the establishment of "comprehensive primary health care centres" - a larger-scale version of the Government's plans for 31 GP super clinics - to provide one-stop-shops for care by GPs, nurses, diagnostic services, family and child health and other professionals such as physiotherapists, psychologists and podiatrists.
The commission says the Commonwealth's primary care role should include the takeover of largely state-run community health centres, services such as those for women and children, sexual health and alcohol and drug treatment programs.
Another proposal by the commission is to provide young families and patients with chronic and complex conditions with the option to enrol in a single primary health-care service to improve continuity and co-ordination of care.
The commission says present state-federal funding arrangements impede the provision of "connected, comprehensive primary health care".
"Strong primary health care must also drive quality performance through ensuring the 'right care in the right place', including by reducing avoidable hospital visits and admissions by focusing on early intervention and supported self-management," the report says.
It poses the ideal of a connected health system which responds to changing needs, from infancy, through mental health services for young people, co-ordinated care for those with chronic diseases, and support for frail older people living in their homes.
Handing the Federal Government sole responsibility for primary health-care funding would give clear responsibility and accountability for a coherent national policy with identified goals and strategies supported by adequate funding.
The Australian Medical Association is likely to resist the primary health-care centres. It has previously criticised the quality of such care and says it would compete with GPs' practices.
ROBERTSON ON ERC
New Robertson role a 'stitch-up'
Andrew Clennell and Alexandra Smith, smh
February 16, 2009
JOHN ROBERTSON'S role in government has been surprisingly bolstered by the Premier, Nathan Rees, putting the former union boss on the powerful expenditure review committee, without consulting the Treasurer, Eric Roozendaal.
The move has raised eyebrows among senior ministers but there is also conjecture that it may be part of a plan by Mr Rees to make life tough for Mr Robertson.
The former union boss has ambitions to be premier and some Labor Right MPs view him as a possible replacement for Mr Rees, despite being in the upper house.
Senior Government sources have suggested it was a serious attempt to "stitch up" Mr Robertson by giving him the prisons portfolio, where there is a privatisation agenda in play, and public sector reform, as his first portfolios as a minister.
Putting him on the expenditure review committee, which also contains the Treasurer, Finance Minister, Deputy Premier and Premier, could put him in the firing line when it comes to making cuts and taking on public sector unions.
A spokeswoman for the Premier, Korena Flanagan, said: "The very obvious answer [why he was put on the committee] is he is on the ERC because of his role as public sector reform minister."
Mr Rees's leadership has been strengthened for the short term after the federal and state Labor head offices intervened to stop further divisions in the NSW Right, amid speculation that a federal election will be held later this year.
The Herald has been told that a key reason for the appointment of Graeme Wedderburn as the Premier's chief of staff - organised by powerbroker Mark Arbib and national secretary Karl Bitar - was to stabilise the Rees regime for the looming federal election.
It is understood Mr Wedderburn was given the position partly to do a "federal job". The Herald has previously revealed he has been promised a Senate seat in return.
The Labor Party's head office recently forced the Police Minister, Tony Kelly, to cancel a barbecue he was to host for MPs in the Right faction not associated with the powerbrokers Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi in a bid to quell speculation that forces were gathering against Mr Rees.
A Right MP said party bosses were trying to "bottle up opposition" to Mr Rees until after a federal election.
"There is no doubt they are trying to put a lid on NSW because they don't want the focus to be on a caucus fight," the MP said. "The feeling is that there will be an election later this year and they want to keep NSW's problems off the radar."
The federal Finance Minister, Lindsay Tanner, attempted to hose down speculation of an election yesterday, which has also been fuelled by the fact the Labor party's national conference has been brought forward. The conference was moved from January 31, next year to July this year.
Mr Tanner told the Ten Network: "That's [an early election's] certainly the last thing on my mind, and I'm sure the last thing on the Government's mind. People … expect us to govern, deal with the crises we've been presented with.
"An election, I don't think, would … help us tackle the huge problems we have arising from the international recession. We are committed to doing what is needed to govern Australia to protect jobs."
Andrew Clennell and Alexandra Smith, smh
February 16, 2009
JOHN ROBERTSON'S role in government has been surprisingly bolstered by the Premier, Nathan Rees, putting the former union boss on the powerful expenditure review committee, without consulting the Treasurer, Eric Roozendaal.
The move has raised eyebrows among senior ministers but there is also conjecture that it may be part of a plan by Mr Rees to make life tough for Mr Robertson.
The former union boss has ambitions to be premier and some Labor Right MPs view him as a possible replacement for Mr Rees, despite being in the upper house.
Senior Government sources have suggested it was a serious attempt to "stitch up" Mr Robertson by giving him the prisons portfolio, where there is a privatisation agenda in play, and public sector reform, as his first portfolios as a minister.
Putting him on the expenditure review committee, which also contains the Treasurer, Finance Minister, Deputy Premier and Premier, could put him in the firing line when it comes to making cuts and taking on public sector unions.
A spokeswoman for the Premier, Korena Flanagan, said: "The very obvious answer [why he was put on the committee] is he is on the ERC because of his role as public sector reform minister."
Mr Rees's leadership has been strengthened for the short term after the federal and state Labor head offices intervened to stop further divisions in the NSW Right, amid speculation that a federal election will be held later this year.
The Herald has been told that a key reason for the appointment of Graeme Wedderburn as the Premier's chief of staff - organised by powerbroker Mark Arbib and national secretary Karl Bitar - was to stabilise the Rees regime for the looming federal election.
It is understood Mr Wedderburn was given the position partly to do a "federal job". The Herald has previously revealed he has been promised a Senate seat in return.
The Labor Party's head office recently forced the Police Minister, Tony Kelly, to cancel a barbecue he was to host for MPs in the Right faction not associated with the powerbrokers Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi in a bid to quell speculation that forces were gathering against Mr Rees.
A Right MP said party bosses were trying to "bottle up opposition" to Mr Rees until after a federal election.
"There is no doubt they are trying to put a lid on NSW because they don't want the focus to be on a caucus fight," the MP said. "The feeling is that there will be an election later this year and they want to keep NSW's problems off the radar."
The federal Finance Minister, Lindsay Tanner, attempted to hose down speculation of an election yesterday, which has also been fuelled by the fact the Labor party's national conference has been brought forward. The conference was moved from January 31, next year to July this year.
Mr Tanner told the Ten Network: "That's [an early election's] certainly the last thing on my mind, and I'm sure the last thing on the Government's mind. People … expect us to govern, deal with the crises we've been presented with.
"An election, I don't think, would … help us tackle the huge problems we have arising from the international recession. We are committed to doing what is needed to govern Australia to protect jobs."
Sunday, February 15, 2009
BLOWOUT IN DISABLED PENSION
Red News Readers,
Nice to see this Howard Government initiative failed!!
Jenny Haines
$3b blow-out in disabled pension
Josh Gordon, smh
February 15, 2009
THE Rudd Government is facing a $3 billion blow-out in the cost of the disability support pension, with new figures confirming earlier efforts to push recipients into paid work have failed.
The Howard government had predicted its 2005 plan to force people from the disability pension into paid work by tightening access rules would cut the number of recipients to 690,664 this year.
But internal Government figures show there are now 736,000 disability support pensioners on the public books - about 45,000 more than expected.
The federal budget is now straining to meet the rising cost of the scheme, which supports people assessed as unable to work because of a physical, intellectual or psychiatric impairment.
The scheme is already over budget by $369 million this financial year, with the blow-out expected to widen annually to create a financial hole worth more than $3 billion over the four years to 2011-12.
Family Minister Jenny Macklin accused the Howard government of squandering an opportunity during a period of strong economic growth to reform the disability support system in a way that would support people with disabilities into the future.
Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities Bill Shorten said the challenge was to change community and employer attitudes to encourage people to hire workers with disabilities, warning that the scheme had become a "pension of last resort".
"If you've got a mental illness or a physical impairment or a mild intellectual disability, people just don't know how to talk to you," Mr Shorten said.
"So I see the DSP challenge as changing community attitudes and employer attitudes. The average time people are on the DSP is 11 years - it's a pension of last resort for people with an impairment."
It remains unclear what the Government intends to do about the burgeoning cost of the scheme, although suggestions include incentives to encourage employees to hire people with disabilities and extra payments to help people with disabilities meet work costs such as travel.
The rising cost of the scheme has been driven almost entirely by a surge in the number of female disability support pensioners following the closure of other payments, including the phasing out of widow and partner allowances.
Government figures show about 4.5 per cent with working age women are now receiving the pension, compared with about 1.5 per cent in the early 1990s.
The proportion of women receiving the pension is expected to continue rising until it reaches the male rate, about 6 per cent.
A single person on the disability support pension can get a maximum of $562.10 a fortnight, compared with about $449 a fortnight for people on the dole.
The Government's updated economic forecasts, released last week, added a further $101 million to the cost of the scheme in 2008-09 and $166 million in 2009-10.
Nice to see this Howard Government initiative failed!!
Jenny Haines
$3b blow-out in disabled pension
Josh Gordon, smh
February 15, 2009
THE Rudd Government is facing a $3 billion blow-out in the cost of the disability support pension, with new figures confirming earlier efforts to push recipients into paid work have failed.
The Howard government had predicted its 2005 plan to force people from the disability pension into paid work by tightening access rules would cut the number of recipients to 690,664 this year.
But internal Government figures show there are now 736,000 disability support pensioners on the public books - about 45,000 more than expected.
The federal budget is now straining to meet the rising cost of the scheme, which supports people assessed as unable to work because of a physical, intellectual or psychiatric impairment.
The scheme is already over budget by $369 million this financial year, with the blow-out expected to widen annually to create a financial hole worth more than $3 billion over the four years to 2011-12.
Family Minister Jenny Macklin accused the Howard government of squandering an opportunity during a period of strong economic growth to reform the disability support system in a way that would support people with disabilities into the future.
Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities Bill Shorten said the challenge was to change community and employer attitudes to encourage people to hire workers with disabilities, warning that the scheme had become a "pension of last resort".
"If you've got a mental illness or a physical impairment or a mild intellectual disability, people just don't know how to talk to you," Mr Shorten said.
"So I see the DSP challenge as changing community attitudes and employer attitudes. The average time people are on the DSP is 11 years - it's a pension of last resort for people with an impairment."
It remains unclear what the Government intends to do about the burgeoning cost of the scheme, although suggestions include incentives to encourage employees to hire people with disabilities and extra payments to help people with disabilities meet work costs such as travel.
The rising cost of the scheme has been driven almost entirely by a surge in the number of female disability support pensioners following the closure of other payments, including the phasing out of widow and partner allowances.
Government figures show about 4.5 per cent with working age women are now receiving the pension, compared with about 1.5 per cent in the early 1990s.
The proportion of women receiving the pension is expected to continue rising until it reaches the male rate, about 6 per cent.
A single person on the disability support pension can get a maximum of $562.10 a fortnight, compared with about $449 a fortnight for people on the dole.
The Government's updated economic forecasts, released last week, added a further $101 million to the cost of the scheme in 2008-09 and $166 million in 2009-10.
EATING DISORDER DEATH AT RPAH INVESTIGATED
Red News Readers,
Outrage at the death of this young woman is justified. It is a pity that that outrage cannot be harnessed into action. There has been a crying need for beds for eating disorders for many years but the pleas of those in these mental health services have gone unnoticed and unlistened to by the health bureaucracy. People with eating disorders and those who work with them have very few advocates and not much power. Spending priorites are elsewhere.
Jenny Haines
Caroline Marcus, smh
15.2.09
THE family of a young woman who lost her eight-year battle with anorexia last week has accused the NSW health system of gross incompetence, saying she could have been saved.
Catena Di Mauro died at Royal Prince Alfred hospital on February 7. She was 20.
Her father, Frank, has demanded an investigation into her treatment and death.
"I told them [the hospital]: 'You are murderers. I will not rest until you come to justice."'
The family's claims against the hospital include that Catena — whose story featured on the front page of The Sun-Herald in January 2007 — was denied visits from them; could wait four days to have her feeding tubes reinserted after she had removed them; was given access to her own toilet where she could purge meals; tried to hang herself while under observation; and was subjected to a rape attempt by a fellow patient.
Yesterday Health Minister JohnDella Bosca vowed to have the family's claimsinvestigated.
A spokesman said the minister would help the family complain to the Health Care Complaints Commission and would request information from the area health service.
Mr Di Mauro said his daughter had been successfully treated at Newcastle's John Hunter Hospital, where she had gained 10kilograms in five months in 2006. But in July that year he was told the eating disorder unit would be closed because of a lack of funding and she would be transferred to the psychiatric ward at RPA. There, she shared a room with men suffering schizophrenia and drug addiction, and her condition quickly deteriorated.
She weighed just 28 kilograms when she turned 18.
Her twin brother, Paolo, said "she was treated like a dog".
Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell said it was "appalling" that only four beds in NSW were dedicated to eating disorders.
Outrage at the death of this young woman is justified. It is a pity that that outrage cannot be harnessed into action. There has been a crying need for beds for eating disorders for many years but the pleas of those in these mental health services have gone unnoticed and unlistened to by the health bureaucracy. People with eating disorders and those who work with them have very few advocates and not much power. Spending priorites are elsewhere.
Jenny Haines
Caroline Marcus, smh
15.2.09
THE family of a young woman who lost her eight-year battle with anorexia last week has accused the NSW health system of gross incompetence, saying she could have been saved.
Catena Di Mauro died at Royal Prince Alfred hospital on February 7. She was 20.
Her father, Frank, has demanded an investigation into her treatment and death.
"I told them [the hospital]: 'You are murderers. I will not rest until you come to justice."'
The family's claims against the hospital include that Catena — whose story featured on the front page of The Sun-Herald in January 2007 — was denied visits from them; could wait four days to have her feeding tubes reinserted after she had removed them; was given access to her own toilet where she could purge meals; tried to hang herself while under observation; and was subjected to a rape attempt by a fellow patient.
Yesterday Health Minister JohnDella Bosca vowed to have the family's claimsinvestigated.
A spokesman said the minister would help the family complain to the Health Care Complaints Commission and would request information from the area health service.
Mr Di Mauro said his daughter had been successfully treated at Newcastle's John Hunter Hospital, where she had gained 10kilograms in five months in 2006. But in July that year he was told the eating disorder unit would be closed because of a lack of funding and she would be transferred to the psychiatric ward at RPA. There, she shared a room with men suffering schizophrenia and drug addiction, and her condition quickly deteriorated.
She weighed just 28 kilograms when she turned 18.
Her twin brother, Paolo, said "she was treated like a dog".
Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell said it was "appalling" that only four beds in NSW were dedicated to eating disorders.
CLASS ACTION AGAINST PRIVATE POWER COMPANIES IN VICTORIA
Huge fire class action launched
Cameron Houston and Michael Bachelard, The Age
February 15, 2009
THE Brumby Government and a private electricity company face one of the largest class actions in Victorian history over last weekend's devastating firestorm.
The legal wrangle, which is expected to involve hundreds of millions of dollars and last for years, will centre on a fallen power line that is believed to have sparked the blaze that tore through Kinglake, Steels Creek and St Andrews, killing more than 100 people and destroying about 1000 homes.
The Phoenix taskforce is examining a two-kilometre stretch of power line in Kilmore East that snapped during strong winds and record heat about 11am last Saturday. Within minutes a nearby pine forest was ablaze. Within six hours the fire had destroyed nearly every building in the towns in its path.
On Thursday, police removed a length of the fallen power line and a pole as evidence.
The lawsuit will cover thousands of farmers, small business owners, tourist operators and residents who lost homes.
Yesterday Slidders Lawyers partner Daniel Oldham confirmed that a class action had been issued in the Supreme Court of Victoria on Friday against Singapore-owned electricity company SP AusNet, which is responsible for maintaining most of the power lines in eastern Victoria.
"It is believed that the claim will be made on the basis of negligent management of power lines and infrastructure," Mr Oldham said.
Gadens Lawyers will issue a separate claim against SP AusNet this week. Slater & Gordon has refused to rule out similar action, but said the firm would wait for the findings of a royal commission to be released late next year.
The Insurance Council of Australia has estimated the cost of the fires at about $500 million. But SP AusNet's legal liability has been capped at $100 million under a deal struck by the former Kennett government with private utility operators, when the former State Electricity Commission was privatised in 1995. Legal sources said this meant the Brumby Government could be forced to cover a shortfall of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Friday's Supreme Court action came as five Western Districts law firms, including Maddens Lawyers and Brown & Proudfoot, met to discuss a separate class action on behalf of victims of the Horsham bushfires, which were also caused by faulty power lines. Legal action is also expected over a separate fire sparked by a fallen power pole that burnt vast swathes of land in Mudgegonga and Dederang.
In other developments:
■ Marysville residents yesterday made the journey back to view their stricken town in a convoy of coaches.
■ The Department of Sustainability and Environment said favourable weather conditions had helped bring all but 12 remaining blazes under control last night, and an 800-kilometre containment line was close to completion.
■ Major-General John Cantwell, acting head of the Victorian Bushfire Reconstruction and Recovery Authority, said builders and other tradesmen would start work on fixing damaged homes this week.
■ A senior emergency services source confirmed that the triple-0 phone line was going unanswered during the crisis, preventing people from reporting new fires, and that CFA internal radio and paging services, and emergency notifications on CFA and DSE websites were clogged and inadequate.
■ Royal commission chairman Justice Bernard Teague acknowledged the "huge challenge" ahead, but would not elaborate on the terms of his inquiry until his appointment was made official tomorrow.
Melbourne barrister Tim Tobin, QC, successfully represented hundreds of victims of the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires in a class action against the State Electricity Commission. The statutory authority was forced to pay out more than $300 million to more than 5000 claimants, after clashing power lines were found to have caused fires at Mount Macedon, north of Melbourne, and Warrnambool, in the state's west.
Mr Tobin said private utility companies had a duty of care to Victorian communities.
"That means keeping electricity lines clear of trees and in a condition that won't cause fires. They must also have systems in place to identify and prevent risks occurring," Mr Tobin said.
A spokeswoman for SP AusNet said the power company would assist with investigations into the cause of the deadly blaze.
"Our priority is to restore power to fire-affected areas as quickly as possible," she said.
A spokesman for Energy Safe Victoria said the government body had audited the network's bushfire risk to make sure required distances between power lines and vegetation were maintained. Power companies had been given a clean bill of health, and electricity firms were judged to be "well prepared for the 2008-09 bushfire season".
He said there were no regulations applying to the distances between poles supporting electricity lines and spans of one kilometre were not unusual.
Cameron Houston and Michael Bachelard, The Age
February 15, 2009
THE Brumby Government and a private electricity company face one of the largest class actions in Victorian history over last weekend's devastating firestorm.
The legal wrangle, which is expected to involve hundreds of millions of dollars and last for years, will centre on a fallen power line that is believed to have sparked the blaze that tore through Kinglake, Steels Creek and St Andrews, killing more than 100 people and destroying about 1000 homes.
The Phoenix taskforce is examining a two-kilometre stretch of power line in Kilmore East that snapped during strong winds and record heat about 11am last Saturday. Within minutes a nearby pine forest was ablaze. Within six hours the fire had destroyed nearly every building in the towns in its path.
On Thursday, police removed a length of the fallen power line and a pole as evidence.
The lawsuit will cover thousands of farmers, small business owners, tourist operators and residents who lost homes.
Yesterday Slidders Lawyers partner Daniel Oldham confirmed that a class action had been issued in the Supreme Court of Victoria on Friday against Singapore-owned electricity company SP AusNet, which is responsible for maintaining most of the power lines in eastern Victoria.
"It is believed that the claim will be made on the basis of negligent management of power lines and infrastructure," Mr Oldham said.
Gadens Lawyers will issue a separate claim against SP AusNet this week. Slater & Gordon has refused to rule out similar action, but said the firm would wait for the findings of a royal commission to be released late next year.
The Insurance Council of Australia has estimated the cost of the fires at about $500 million. But SP AusNet's legal liability has been capped at $100 million under a deal struck by the former Kennett government with private utility operators, when the former State Electricity Commission was privatised in 1995. Legal sources said this meant the Brumby Government could be forced to cover a shortfall of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Friday's Supreme Court action came as five Western Districts law firms, including Maddens Lawyers and Brown & Proudfoot, met to discuss a separate class action on behalf of victims of the Horsham bushfires, which were also caused by faulty power lines. Legal action is also expected over a separate fire sparked by a fallen power pole that burnt vast swathes of land in Mudgegonga and Dederang.
In other developments:
■ Marysville residents yesterday made the journey back to view their stricken town in a convoy of coaches.
■ The Department of Sustainability and Environment said favourable weather conditions had helped bring all but 12 remaining blazes under control last night, and an 800-kilometre containment line was close to completion.
■ Major-General John Cantwell, acting head of the Victorian Bushfire Reconstruction and Recovery Authority, said builders and other tradesmen would start work on fixing damaged homes this week.
■ A senior emergency services source confirmed that the triple-0 phone line was going unanswered during the crisis, preventing people from reporting new fires, and that CFA internal radio and paging services, and emergency notifications on CFA and DSE websites were clogged and inadequate.
■ Royal commission chairman Justice Bernard Teague acknowledged the "huge challenge" ahead, but would not elaborate on the terms of his inquiry until his appointment was made official tomorrow.
Melbourne barrister Tim Tobin, QC, successfully represented hundreds of victims of the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires in a class action against the State Electricity Commission. The statutory authority was forced to pay out more than $300 million to more than 5000 claimants, after clashing power lines were found to have caused fires at Mount Macedon, north of Melbourne, and Warrnambool, in the state's west.
Mr Tobin said private utility companies had a duty of care to Victorian communities.
"That means keeping electricity lines clear of trees and in a condition that won't cause fires. They must also have systems in place to identify and prevent risks occurring," Mr Tobin said.
A spokeswoman for SP AusNet said the power company would assist with investigations into the cause of the deadly blaze.
"Our priority is to restore power to fire-affected areas as quickly as possible," she said.
A spokesman for Energy Safe Victoria said the government body had audited the network's bushfire risk to make sure required distances between power lines and vegetation were maintained. Power companies had been given a clean bill of health, and electricity firms were judged to be "well prepared for the 2008-09 bushfire season".
He said there were no regulations applying to the distances between poles supporting electricity lines and spans of one kilometre were not unusual.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
NATIONAL DENTAL SCANDAL DRAGS ON
Red News Readers,
What does it take to get governments moving on the need for a national dental scheme? The situation is a scandal and has been for some time ever since the Howard Government abolished the Commonwealth Dental Scheme. I am aware of people living with severe dental pain for weeks; people who need emergency care and cannot afford it so turn up at hospital emergency departments begging for help; people living on soft food and fluids for months and years, losing weight and becoming malnourished. We are a wealthy country. This should not be happening in this country. And as for the dental profession, where is your compassion?
Jenny Haines
National dental scheme urged for needy
Mark Metherell, smh
February 14, 2009
THE ailing state of public dental care has prompted a call from the Government's health reform experts for a national scheme to provide care to needy patients with bad teeth.
The Australian Health and Hospitals Reform Commission will release an interim report on Monday which will propose a significant rethink of health policies in areas such as public hospitals, indigenous health and spreading Medicare payments beyond doctors to other professionals.
The report is understood to have targeted the widespread deterioration in dental health as a priority for revamped federal intervention. It is estimated 650,000 people who cannot afford dental care are in need of dental treatment.
The report proposes novel approaches, including the expanded use of new dental graduates to increase publicly financed services that have failed to meet current demands from patients in most states including NSW.
The proposal comes as the Rudd Government baulks at a Commonwealth dental scheme that it claims would provide 1 million services over three years to needy patients.
The Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, has refused to implement the scheme pledged before the election until opposition parties agree to legislation axing the previous government's Medicare dental scheme for patients with chronic medical conditions.
The Government has introduced a dental scheme for teenagers, but dentist organisations say both that scheme and the proposed Commonwealth scheme are poorly targeted and rely on under-resourced public dental services.
An expert report to the reform commission last year identified "two worlds" in dentistry: the 39 per cent of adults who saw dentists regularly and the 61 per cent who did not, and who had poorer oral health and many times the rate of tooth extractions - a precursor of poorer quality of life.
The report by Adelaide University population dental health experts, Professor John Spencer and Dr Jane Harford, also said primary school children's oral health "has plateaued and then deteriorated by around 20 per cent across the last 8-10 years".
The commission's interim report is expected to float a range of proposals to upgrade the health system in preparation for its final report to the Government in June. It is expected to raise the option of a federal takeover of public hospitals. The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, will decide on this issue by the middle of the year.
The commission has considered a vast range of proposals which were presented to it in more than 500 submissions.
In its 400-page report, the commission is likely to put more pressure on the Government in sensitive areas including performance payments for doctors and dealing with inequities in the health system that tend to deliver more publicly subsidised services to well-off people living in well-served areas.
However, the Government has ordered the commission to stay away from a subject which has been much criticised in Labor ranks - the $4 billion private health insurance subsidy.
.
What does it take to get governments moving on the need for a national dental scheme? The situation is a scandal and has been for some time ever since the Howard Government abolished the Commonwealth Dental Scheme. I am aware of people living with severe dental pain for weeks; people who need emergency care and cannot afford it so turn up at hospital emergency departments begging for help; people living on soft food and fluids for months and years, losing weight and becoming malnourished. We are a wealthy country. This should not be happening in this country. And as for the dental profession, where is your compassion?
Jenny Haines
National dental scheme urged for needy
Mark Metherell, smh
February 14, 2009
THE ailing state of public dental care has prompted a call from the Government's health reform experts for a national scheme to provide care to needy patients with bad teeth.
The Australian Health and Hospitals Reform Commission will release an interim report on Monday which will propose a significant rethink of health policies in areas such as public hospitals, indigenous health and spreading Medicare payments beyond doctors to other professionals.
The report is understood to have targeted the widespread deterioration in dental health as a priority for revamped federal intervention. It is estimated 650,000 people who cannot afford dental care are in need of dental treatment.
The report proposes novel approaches, including the expanded use of new dental graduates to increase publicly financed services that have failed to meet current demands from patients in most states including NSW.
The proposal comes as the Rudd Government baulks at a Commonwealth dental scheme that it claims would provide 1 million services over three years to needy patients.
The Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, has refused to implement the scheme pledged before the election until opposition parties agree to legislation axing the previous government's Medicare dental scheme for patients with chronic medical conditions.
The Government has introduced a dental scheme for teenagers, but dentist organisations say both that scheme and the proposed Commonwealth scheme are poorly targeted and rely on under-resourced public dental services.
An expert report to the reform commission last year identified "two worlds" in dentistry: the 39 per cent of adults who saw dentists regularly and the 61 per cent who did not, and who had poorer oral health and many times the rate of tooth extractions - a precursor of poorer quality of life.
The report by Adelaide University population dental health experts, Professor John Spencer and Dr Jane Harford, also said primary school children's oral health "has plateaued and then deteriorated by around 20 per cent across the last 8-10 years".
The commission's interim report is expected to float a range of proposals to upgrade the health system in preparation for its final report to the Government in June. It is expected to raise the option of a federal takeover of public hospitals. The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, will decide on this issue by the middle of the year.
The commission has considered a vast range of proposals which were presented to it in more than 500 submissions.
In its 400-page report, the commission is likely to put more pressure on the Government in sensitive areas including performance payments for doctors and dealing with inequities in the health system that tend to deliver more publicly subsidised services to well-off people living in well-served areas.
However, the Government has ordered the commission to stay away from a subject which has been much criticised in Labor ranks - the $4 billion private health insurance subsidy.
.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
NURSES IGNORED BY PATEL
Patel 'gave all-clear on patient who died'
Article from: AAP
February 12, 2009 11:36am
SURGEON Jayant Patel called the wife of one of his alleged victims and told her the operation he had just performed had been a complete success, a court has been told.
Judy Kemps told the Brisbane Magistrates Court today Dr Patel had said her husband Gerry was experiencing "a little bit of bleeding" following an operation on his oesophagus at the Bundaberg Base Hospital in December 2004.
She said the 58-year-old doctor sounded happy with how the operation had gone, and said the bleeding was nothing to worry about.
However, the court was told Mr Kemps died the following day from internal bleeding.
Dr Patel is facing 13 charges, including three of manslaughter, relating to his time as director of surgery at the hospital from 2003 to 2005.
The crown alleged Dr Patel failed to stop the blood loss during Mr Kemps' operation, and that he left Mr Kemps bleeding for several hours so he could conduct non-emergency surgery on another patient.
Prosecutor Ross Martin SC told the court that when Dr Patel returned to check on Mr Kemps, he did not seek specialist help and completed further surgery without stopping the bleeding.
Nurse Gail Doherty, who helped with the operation on Mr Kemps, told the court she was worried about the amount of bleeding.
She said she expressed her concerns to Dr Patel and the anaesthetists, but that she was ignored.
Nurse Marie Goatham said she was also "very uncomfortable" with the way the operation on Mr Kemps went, and she went home that night and made detailed notes on the procedure.
She said she too had tried to raise concerns with Dr Patel about the bleeding, but that he had ignored her.
The committal hearing continues.
Article from: AAP
February 12, 2009 11:36am
SURGEON Jayant Patel called the wife of one of his alleged victims and told her the operation he had just performed had been a complete success, a court has been told.
Judy Kemps told the Brisbane Magistrates Court today Dr Patel had said her husband Gerry was experiencing "a little bit of bleeding" following an operation on his oesophagus at the Bundaberg Base Hospital in December 2004.
She said the 58-year-old doctor sounded happy with how the operation had gone, and said the bleeding was nothing to worry about.
However, the court was told Mr Kemps died the following day from internal bleeding.
Dr Patel is facing 13 charges, including three of manslaughter, relating to his time as director of surgery at the hospital from 2003 to 2005.
The crown alleged Dr Patel failed to stop the blood loss during Mr Kemps' operation, and that he left Mr Kemps bleeding for several hours so he could conduct non-emergency surgery on another patient.
Prosecutor Ross Martin SC told the court that when Dr Patel returned to check on Mr Kemps, he did not seek specialist help and completed further surgery without stopping the bleeding.
Nurse Gail Doherty, who helped with the operation on Mr Kemps, told the court she was worried about the amount of bleeding.
She said she expressed her concerns to Dr Patel and the anaesthetists, but that she was ignored.
Nurse Marie Goatham said she was also "very uncomfortable" with the way the operation on Mr Kemps went, and she went home that night and made detailed notes on the procedure.
She said she too had tried to raise concerns with Dr Patel about the bleeding, but that he had ignored her.
The committal hearing continues.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
HE DID HIS BEST
Karen Kissane, smh
11.2.09
PAUL HENDRIE, captain of the Kinglake Country Fire Authority, woke up on Saturday knowing it was going to be a "really, really bad day".
City folks want to know why so many people died in Kinglake; why there was no warning, and why there were no fire trucks in town to protect them.
Mr Hendrie can tell them.
And he can also tell them how it was that so many were saved, because he was the one who helped organise it.
That morning, Mr Hendrie went to the CFA station at the end of the main street. He and his team listened to the radio and scanner and used the internet to map nearby fires.
They checked that the town's two water tankers were ready to roll. Then they waited, as the calls became more urgent and the maydays began.
In the afternoon they received a call for help from the town of St Andrews, about 15 kilometres down the mountain. Mr Hendrie sent down one of Kinglake's tankers.
"Then we got another call. And against my better judgment we sent the second tanker out, which meant there was nothing on the mountain. There were no tankers on the mountain.
"The plan was that tankers would stay on the mountain but when you have got a fire, you go. You fight the fire you've got. You can't predict the predicament that will come."
Mr Hendrie found himself at the station with just a command car and three or four crew members.
The radio traffic hotted up; the fire had jumped a road and right into St Andrews. Mr Hendrie knew some Kinglake people were fleeing in that direction. He called police to ask for a blockade but they were already stretched too tight.
He jumped in a brigade car with a white-knuckled colleague and they sped down the St Andrews road, watching out for spot fires, seeing embers burning in the leaves along its edges. As he passed cars going down he shouted at them: "Get back up! Just go, go, go!"
He reached a man fleeing back to Kinglake who told him he only got out of St Andrews just in time. It was then that Mr Hendrie did a U-turn and herded the other cars back to town. "You know those T-shirts that say, 'I'm a firefighter. If you see me running, follow'? It was like that," he said.
Back in Kinglake, he used cars and a horse trailer to block the start of the St Andrews road.
There were cars everywhere. People were asking him where they should go. He knew they couldn't go to Kinglake West in one direction and St Andrews in the other. "What could I do? How could I advise them where to go?"
Then the wind changed and the flames moved up the mountain. Many families realised their danger only when they heard the roar of the flames - by which time it was too late to flee.
Mr Hendrie told frightened residents all he could offer them was the main street of town, which he thought would be fairly safe. There was a clear piece of parkland, and he thought the shops would resist the fire pretty well. Hundreds of people gathered in the parkland, and hundreds more in the metal shed that is the CFA station. Those in the oval covered themselves in towels wet with ice from a chest that had spent the previous night at a buck's party.
"Then all of a sudden there was this black. The column of fire came up virtually over us. It spotted into the paddock and the trees behind the station. It burnt it all. We heard cars exploding. The service station went up. Hundred-pound gas tanks were going up - just going BANG, the loudest sound I have ever heard. It just got worse and there was blackness all over. "
And then it passed. "We could see buildings burning in the main street - the pizza place and the servo went together."
The wounded began to arrive. Some had burns, others had injured airways because of the smoke and heat.
Ambulances could not get up the mountain to rescue those needing hospital care. But a CFA strike team and SES crews with bulldozers cleared a path and local police ferried the injured in their patrol cars.
Next Mr Hendrie had to deal with the burning houses that were still alight. "It was sort of like I went through two days in one day. When the fire came over there was darkness and then it came light again." He was on his feet for 40 hours straight, and many of his crew were, too. Then he got four hours sleep and began all over again.
Of the people who sheltered with him, he says: "I'm not sure that I saved them. I'm sure it was luck that we didn't have a massive ember attack in this street."
This fire took houses that should not have been vulnerable and had deluge sprinkler systems. It took a church and a kindergarten that were newly rebuilt after arson attacks a few years ago.
Mr Hendrie has had 33 years in firefighting and he says he has never seen this fire's match in either speed or ferocity. He is concerned that when his crews finally stop, the shock of what they have seen will hit them.
He has his own feelings to deal with too. He wept with relief when he got to the driveway of his daughter's house after the fire had passed and discovered that his children and grandchildren were all safe. Like many others in the Kinglake team, he had to fight fires in one place knowing that his family was under attack somewhere else.
But the stress has left its mark on him. He will stick with the CFA but seems a little relieved that his stint as captain finishes in June.
He feels he has done his bit.
11.2.09
PAUL HENDRIE, captain of the Kinglake Country Fire Authority, woke up on Saturday knowing it was going to be a "really, really bad day".
City folks want to know why so many people died in Kinglake; why there was no warning, and why there were no fire trucks in town to protect them.
Mr Hendrie can tell them.
And he can also tell them how it was that so many were saved, because he was the one who helped organise it.
That morning, Mr Hendrie went to the CFA station at the end of the main street. He and his team listened to the radio and scanner and used the internet to map nearby fires.
They checked that the town's two water tankers were ready to roll. Then they waited, as the calls became more urgent and the maydays began.
In the afternoon they received a call for help from the town of St Andrews, about 15 kilometres down the mountain. Mr Hendrie sent down one of Kinglake's tankers.
"Then we got another call. And against my better judgment we sent the second tanker out, which meant there was nothing on the mountain. There were no tankers on the mountain.
"The plan was that tankers would stay on the mountain but when you have got a fire, you go. You fight the fire you've got. You can't predict the predicament that will come."
Mr Hendrie found himself at the station with just a command car and three or four crew members.
The radio traffic hotted up; the fire had jumped a road and right into St Andrews. Mr Hendrie knew some Kinglake people were fleeing in that direction. He called police to ask for a blockade but they were already stretched too tight.
He jumped in a brigade car with a white-knuckled colleague and they sped down the St Andrews road, watching out for spot fires, seeing embers burning in the leaves along its edges. As he passed cars going down he shouted at them: "Get back up! Just go, go, go!"
He reached a man fleeing back to Kinglake who told him he only got out of St Andrews just in time. It was then that Mr Hendrie did a U-turn and herded the other cars back to town. "You know those T-shirts that say, 'I'm a firefighter. If you see me running, follow'? It was like that," he said.
Back in Kinglake, he used cars and a horse trailer to block the start of the St Andrews road.
There were cars everywhere. People were asking him where they should go. He knew they couldn't go to Kinglake West in one direction and St Andrews in the other. "What could I do? How could I advise them where to go?"
Then the wind changed and the flames moved up the mountain. Many families realised their danger only when they heard the roar of the flames - by which time it was too late to flee.
Mr Hendrie told frightened residents all he could offer them was the main street of town, which he thought would be fairly safe. There was a clear piece of parkland, and he thought the shops would resist the fire pretty well. Hundreds of people gathered in the parkland, and hundreds more in the metal shed that is the CFA station. Those in the oval covered themselves in towels wet with ice from a chest that had spent the previous night at a buck's party.
"Then all of a sudden there was this black. The column of fire came up virtually over us. It spotted into the paddock and the trees behind the station. It burnt it all. We heard cars exploding. The service station went up. Hundred-pound gas tanks were going up - just going BANG, the loudest sound I have ever heard. It just got worse and there was blackness all over. "
And then it passed. "We could see buildings burning in the main street - the pizza place and the servo went together."
The wounded began to arrive. Some had burns, others had injured airways because of the smoke and heat.
Ambulances could not get up the mountain to rescue those needing hospital care. But a CFA strike team and SES crews with bulldozers cleared a path and local police ferried the injured in their patrol cars.
Next Mr Hendrie had to deal with the burning houses that were still alight. "It was sort of like I went through two days in one day. When the fire came over there was darkness and then it came light again." He was on his feet for 40 hours straight, and many of his crew were, too. Then he got four hours sleep and began all over again.
Of the people who sheltered with him, he says: "I'm not sure that I saved them. I'm sure it was luck that we didn't have a massive ember attack in this street."
This fire took houses that should not have been vulnerable and had deluge sprinkler systems. It took a church and a kindergarten that were newly rebuilt after arson attacks a few years ago.
Mr Hendrie has had 33 years in firefighting and he says he has never seen this fire's match in either speed or ferocity. He is concerned that when his crews finally stop, the shock of what they have seen will hit them.
He has his own feelings to deal with too. He wept with relief when he got to the driveway of his daughter's house after the fire had passed and discovered that his children and grandchildren were all safe. Like many others in the Kinglake team, he had to fight fires in one place knowing that his family was under attack somewhere else.
But the stress has left its mark on him. He will stick with the CFA but seems a little relieved that his stint as captain finishes in June.
He feels he has done his bit.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
PATEL LIED
Patel lied to get job in Australia: court
10 February 2009 Content provided to you by AAP.
By Christine Flatley and Jessica Marszalek,
BRISBANE, Feb 9 AAP -
Jayant Patel was almost unemployable in the United States when he lied to Australian authorities that he was a highly successful surgeon who just wanted to help people, a court has been told.
Dr Kees Nydam, who helped recruit Patel to the Bundaberg Base Hospital in 2002, said the Indian-trained surgeon told him he wanted "an opportunity to give back to the community anywhere in the world".
Patel, 58, allegedly told Dr Nydam that money was no issue because he had become incredibly wealthy while working in the US.He didn't reveal, the Brisbane Magistrates Court was told on Monday, that he had been forced to resign from his position in Oregon because of medical negligence, and had had his licence cancelled in New York state.Dr Nydam said Patel never mentioned this in correspondence leading up to his employment, and that he would not have been hired if he had."I would not have employed him," Dr Nydam said.
Dr Nydam was giving evidence on the first day of a committal hearing into charges against Patel during his time as director of surgery at the hospital in southern Queensland between 2003 and 2005.
Patel faces 13 charges, including three of manslaughter, two of grievous bodily harm, eight fraud, as well as one alternative charge of negligent acts causing harm.
It's alleged Patel performed botched operations that led to death or permanent incapacity for several patients.
Prosecutor Ross Martin, SC, said Patel had misdiagnosed patients, performed surgeries he was barred from doing in the US and severely harmed five patients, three of whom died.
In one case, Patel failed to stop internal bleeding during an operation on the oesophagus of Gerry Kemps in December 2004, leaving the patient so he could conduct non-emergency surgery on another patient.Mr Martin said when Patel returned five hours later to stop the internal bleeding, he did not seek specialist help and eventually completed surgery without stopping the bleeding.Mr Kemps died the next day.
In another case, Patel allegedly wrongly told a patient he had cancer and substantially removed his bowel without running the required tests in October 2004.He also removed a healthy salivary gland, missing a cancerous mass, in another patient in 2005.
The fraud charges centre on allegations he falsely represented his qualifications.The committal hearing was told more than 70 witnesses would appear over the next three weeks.
Bundaberg Hospital Patients Support Group spokeswoman Beryl Crosby said outside court the wait had been a long one for all those involved."We are strong, we're very strong," she said.
"We've got to be strong for the other patients - we'll be OK."The committal hearing was adjourned until Wednesday due to the unavailability of witnesses on Tuesday.
© 2008 AAP Disclaimer
10 February 2009 Content provided to you by AAP.
By Christine Flatley and Jessica Marszalek,
BRISBANE, Feb 9 AAP -
Jayant Patel was almost unemployable in the United States when he lied to Australian authorities that he was a highly successful surgeon who just wanted to help people, a court has been told.
Dr Kees Nydam, who helped recruit Patel to the Bundaberg Base Hospital in 2002, said the Indian-trained surgeon told him he wanted "an opportunity to give back to the community anywhere in the world".
Patel, 58, allegedly told Dr Nydam that money was no issue because he had become incredibly wealthy while working in the US.He didn't reveal, the Brisbane Magistrates Court was told on Monday, that he had been forced to resign from his position in Oregon because of medical negligence, and had had his licence cancelled in New York state.Dr Nydam said Patel never mentioned this in correspondence leading up to his employment, and that he would not have been hired if he had."I would not have employed him," Dr Nydam said.
Dr Nydam was giving evidence on the first day of a committal hearing into charges against Patel during his time as director of surgery at the hospital in southern Queensland between 2003 and 2005.
Patel faces 13 charges, including three of manslaughter, two of grievous bodily harm, eight fraud, as well as one alternative charge of negligent acts causing harm.
It's alleged Patel performed botched operations that led to death or permanent incapacity for several patients.
Prosecutor Ross Martin, SC, said Patel had misdiagnosed patients, performed surgeries he was barred from doing in the US and severely harmed five patients, three of whom died.
In one case, Patel failed to stop internal bleeding during an operation on the oesophagus of Gerry Kemps in December 2004, leaving the patient so he could conduct non-emergency surgery on another patient.Mr Martin said when Patel returned five hours later to stop the internal bleeding, he did not seek specialist help and eventually completed surgery without stopping the bleeding.Mr Kemps died the next day.
In another case, Patel allegedly wrongly told a patient he had cancer and substantially removed his bowel without running the required tests in October 2004.He also removed a healthy salivary gland, missing a cancerous mass, in another patient in 2005.
The fraud charges centre on allegations he falsely represented his qualifications.The committal hearing was told more than 70 witnesses would appear over the next three weeks.
Bundaberg Hospital Patients Support Group spokeswoman Beryl Crosby said outside court the wait had been a long one for all those involved."We are strong, we're very strong," she said.
"We've got to be strong for the other patients - we'll be OK."The committal hearing was adjourned until Wednesday due to the unavailability of witnesses on Tuesday.
© 2008 AAP Disclaimer
Sunday, February 08, 2009
NSW HEALTH SYSTEM FINANCES
Hospitals further into crisis
By Clair Weavers, smh
February 08, 2009 12:00am
NSW public hospitals have officially hit rock bottom, producing their worst financial results on record.
The NSW Health annual report, to be tabled in Parliament next month, reveals all the State's health services blew their budgets during 2007-08, plunging them into unprecedented debt.
In total, health services overspent by $159.4 million - a result 500 per cent worse than in the previous year.
Despite this, patients are being forced to wait longer for beds and more medical mistakes are being made.
The disastrous results have prompted the State Government to declare a crackdown on spending and tighter monitoring of budgets.
But staff cutbacks are likely to have a detrimental impact on services to patients this financial year.
The Northern Sydney and Central Coast regions sank deepest into the red, racking up debts of $63.3 million - more than double the total health service overspend in 2006-07.
The debt-laden Greater Western and North Coast area health services each went over budget by about $30 million.
Unpaid bills also reached new highs, leaving businesses that supply hospitals struggling to stay afloat.
The value of accounts not paid within a benchmark of 45 days skyrocketed from zero in 2007 to $75.1 million in 2008.
South Eastern Sydney Illawarra was the worst offender, owing creditors $24.3 million. Greater Western had not paid $20.9 million and Greater Southern accumulated bills of $12.7 million.
This is the worst level of creditor payment on record - and the figure has increased since results were compiled.
Last week, NSW Health admitted the total amount owed to creditors was now at $117.5 million.
The report also revealed worrying slumps in key performance indicators.
One in four patients waited more than 30 minutes to be offloaded from an ambulance at emergency departments.
This transfer, described as "a challenge", is supposed to be as quick as possible to improve a patient's chance of survival and ambulance efficiency.
Nearly a quarter of emergency department patients waited more than eight hours for an inpatient bed.
Mistakes are also on the rise. There were 583 serious safety incidents "in which death or serious harm to a patient has occurred", the highest figure in at least five years.
NSW Health claimed, however, this was because of a change of definitions and better reporting.
There were also more incorrect procedures, including surgery mistakes, and more deaths of hospital patients in falls.
Overall, NSW Health's expenses amounted to a record $13.12 billion in 2007-08 - nearly $36 million a day.
By Clair Weavers, smh
February 08, 2009 12:00am
NSW public hospitals have officially hit rock bottom, producing their worst financial results on record.
The NSW Health annual report, to be tabled in Parliament next month, reveals all the State's health services blew their budgets during 2007-08, plunging them into unprecedented debt.
In total, health services overspent by $159.4 million - a result 500 per cent worse than in the previous year.
Despite this, patients are being forced to wait longer for beds and more medical mistakes are being made.
The disastrous results have prompted the State Government to declare a crackdown on spending and tighter monitoring of budgets.
But staff cutbacks are likely to have a detrimental impact on services to patients this financial year.
The Northern Sydney and Central Coast regions sank deepest into the red, racking up debts of $63.3 million - more than double the total health service overspend in 2006-07.
The debt-laden Greater Western and North Coast area health services each went over budget by about $30 million.
Unpaid bills also reached new highs, leaving businesses that supply hospitals struggling to stay afloat.
The value of accounts not paid within a benchmark of 45 days skyrocketed from zero in 2007 to $75.1 million in 2008.
South Eastern Sydney Illawarra was the worst offender, owing creditors $24.3 million. Greater Western had not paid $20.9 million and Greater Southern accumulated bills of $12.7 million.
This is the worst level of creditor payment on record - and the figure has increased since results were compiled.
Last week, NSW Health admitted the total amount owed to creditors was now at $117.5 million.
The report also revealed worrying slumps in key performance indicators.
One in four patients waited more than 30 minutes to be offloaded from an ambulance at emergency departments.
This transfer, described as "a challenge", is supposed to be as quick as possible to improve a patient's chance of survival and ambulance efficiency.
Nearly a quarter of emergency department patients waited more than eight hours for an inpatient bed.
Mistakes are also on the rise. There were 583 serious safety incidents "in which death or serious harm to a patient has occurred", the highest figure in at least five years.
NSW Health claimed, however, this was because of a change of definitions and better reporting.
There were also more incorrect procedures, including surgery mistakes, and more deaths of hospital patients in falls.
Overall, NSW Health's expenses amounted to a record $13.12 billion in 2007-08 - nearly $36 million a day.
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
REVIEW: THE PATIENT
Take control, patients urged
By Health editor Adam Cresswell , The Australian, 1.2.09
A high-profile surgeon argues it's time for put-upon patients to fight for their rights.
Health editor Adam Cresswell reports
DON'T expect Mohamed Khadra's new book to be comforting reading if you're about to go into hospital.The author of the acclaimed Making the Cut and a professor of surgery at the University of Sydney, he is about to publish a follow-up that makes crystal clear the fact that unappealing food is the smallest of the many hazards facing patients admitted onto public wards.
The new book, called The Patient, is being published next week. It tells the story of a fictional male professional, Jonathan Brewster, who discovers mid-career that he has a bladder cancer.
The book follows him through the various stages of his treatment, noting in pitiless detail along the way the impersonality of the health system, the strains it places on the legions of dedicated yet sleep-deprived staff, and also the unprofessional attitudes of some doctors and nurses.It also documents the cavalcade of cock-ups, major and minor, that go on behind the scenes.
But while the story is fictionalised -- like Brewster, the Victoria Hospital in which it is set does not exist -- The Patient is not fiction. Khadra, the book's sole real character, says most of the things that happen to the unfortunate Brewster and to others within the hospital are drawn from real-life experience.
The book confronts head-on the ``corruption'' of the health system: the fact that patients handed a cancer diagnosis who need an urgent specialist's appointment can effectively jump the queue, simply by having the right social connections -- while other patients without strings to pull have to wait weeks or months.
It spells out the extreme patient-unfriendliness of a system that can bandy about terms such as ``triage'' that barely a handful of people understand. It scores in painful detail the rudeness of some doctors, nurses and other staff; the clock-watching, officious culture of the newer breed of nurses, and the madness of a health bureaucracy that alienates its own permanent nursing and medical staff by paying double rates to last-minute agency fill-ins.
Perhaps most tellingly, the book exposes the extraordinary lack of compassion that can be found in every corner of the system -- from the receptionist who keeps a pain-wracked patient on his feet while she slowly fills in a form, to the haughty consultant whose aloof arrogance scarcely conceals his disdain for public patients, who he believes contribute less to his income and prestige than those paying privately.
Khadra -- who received a huge response to the criticisms of the health system in his previous book -- says a prime motivation for writing The Patient was to help patients understand better what a spell in hospital involves.
``Day in, day out, I sit across the desk from people who are planning their next holiday, they've just been married, they've just bought a house, they've just started a new job -- and I look down at a piece of paper that has words on it or numbers on it that are radically going to change their life for the worse over the next couple of years, or even curtail their life,'' Khadra says.``And I find people just aren't prepared. They have this sense that the health system is a benevolent creation of the government that will look after them; they aren't prepared spiritually, they aren't prepared physically and financially.''
But it's also a call to arms. Khadra himself has been a patient, after being diagnosed 10 years ago -- just as he and his wife had bought a new house, were raising two boys, and as their careers were taking off -- with a thyroid cancer that had already spread to his chest and neck.``I had an extensive period of treatment,'' he recalls. ``And what I saw of the health system then, and what continues -- if anything -- to get worse over the ensuing 10 years, is a health system that ... doesn't deliver compassionate health care to people most in need.
``And my basic feeling is that what has occurred in the 20-year period since the 1980s, when I trained, is a cancerous growth in the bureaucracy of health.``The basic aim of the bureaucracy is to avoid making mistakes. And what that creates is a paralysis of decision-making throughout the system that now has kneecapped every single hospital general manager, health leader, and nursing leader.'
Such a critique could not come at a more poignant time: NSW Health and its minister, John Della Bosca, have been deeply embarrassed this week by further revelations of chronic late payment of debts -- to the extent that some tradesmen and suppliers of drugs, food and other consumables are refusing to deal with hospitals in the west of the state.It chimes with Khadra's own experience. He tells of a general manager of one hospital he worked at who was unable to spend just $55 on a medical textbook without getting clearance from the central health department.
At the ward level, Khadra says the solution is to take the power away from the bureaucrats and give it instead to the clinicians and managers within each hospital who would then once again have the power, and incentive, to ensure their own units ran efficiently.
In a different way, power should be claimed by the patients themselves.``There wasn't a ward I could walk into 20 years ago, in any hospital, where I couldn't go to the nursing unit manager and say `How's Mr Jones', and that nurse would be able to tell me that his cousin visited yesterday, that his toenails have been clipped today, and that he's been moved six times overnight to help with his pressure sores,'' Khadra says, echoing a criticism that earned him widespread public support following the publication of his previous book.``Now, even from the nurse looking after the patient, I'd struggle to get any sense of what's going on with the patient.``What has happened?
What has happened is that local single-point accountability has been taken away from the hospital, so there isn't that opportunity for someone to say this needs to be changed.``If the ward is unclean, who do I go to? The boss of that cleaner is somewhere in town, because it's all outsourced. If the food that I'm putting in front of the patient is unappetising, who do you go to? It's all outsourced somewhere, and there are policies upon policies that obstruct any sort of feedback on that.''
Khadra -- who says he received overwhelming backing from his peers after the publication of Making the Cut in 2007 -- urges patients to ditch the passive role they suffered 50 years ago and claim a greater responsibility for their own care.He accepts he might receive a ``cold shoulder'' from one or two doctors who take umbrage at the portrayal of their profession in the character of David Johnson, an arrogant, glib and dismissive consultant urologist who regards patients as stupid and their questions as irritants to be discouraged.But he stresses the book also portrays ``a number of heroic doctors ... who really are compassionate, who really are competent''.
``The point that I make in The Patient -- if you are dealing with a doctor who isn't communicative, who isn't able to sit down and really go through the benefits and risks of a particular procedure, who isn't transparent about why they are doing it and involves you in a shared decision-making capacity -- perhaps you are going to the wrong doctor,'' he says.``I welcome it when my patients are questioning about every step of the way. Why am I having a PSA test? Why am I having a prostatectomy? What are the alternatives? What are the risks of this, what are the benefits?``Gee, I love those questions, truly -- it shows an involved, informed patient. And we know now there's some evidence to suggest that the outcomes for that type of patient are actually much better, because they are involved in their healthcare, they feel empowered in their own health care.
``Are there doctors out there who avoid that glare of light on their own practice? The answer is yes. But I can tell you the vast majority of competent doctors would welcome that type of questioning."
By Health editor Adam Cresswell , The Australian, 1.2.09
A high-profile surgeon argues it's time for put-upon patients to fight for their rights.
Health editor Adam Cresswell reports
DON'T expect Mohamed Khadra's new book to be comforting reading if you're about to go into hospital.The author of the acclaimed Making the Cut and a professor of surgery at the University of Sydney, he is about to publish a follow-up that makes crystal clear the fact that unappealing food is the smallest of the many hazards facing patients admitted onto public wards.
The new book, called The Patient, is being published next week. It tells the story of a fictional male professional, Jonathan Brewster, who discovers mid-career that he has a bladder cancer.
The book follows him through the various stages of his treatment, noting in pitiless detail along the way the impersonality of the health system, the strains it places on the legions of dedicated yet sleep-deprived staff, and also the unprofessional attitudes of some doctors and nurses.It also documents the cavalcade of cock-ups, major and minor, that go on behind the scenes.
But while the story is fictionalised -- like Brewster, the Victoria Hospital in which it is set does not exist -- The Patient is not fiction. Khadra, the book's sole real character, says most of the things that happen to the unfortunate Brewster and to others within the hospital are drawn from real-life experience.
The book confronts head-on the ``corruption'' of the health system: the fact that patients handed a cancer diagnosis who need an urgent specialist's appointment can effectively jump the queue, simply by having the right social connections -- while other patients without strings to pull have to wait weeks or months.
It spells out the extreme patient-unfriendliness of a system that can bandy about terms such as ``triage'' that barely a handful of people understand. It scores in painful detail the rudeness of some doctors, nurses and other staff; the clock-watching, officious culture of the newer breed of nurses, and the madness of a health bureaucracy that alienates its own permanent nursing and medical staff by paying double rates to last-minute agency fill-ins.
Perhaps most tellingly, the book exposes the extraordinary lack of compassion that can be found in every corner of the system -- from the receptionist who keeps a pain-wracked patient on his feet while she slowly fills in a form, to the haughty consultant whose aloof arrogance scarcely conceals his disdain for public patients, who he believes contribute less to his income and prestige than those paying privately.
Khadra -- who received a huge response to the criticisms of the health system in his previous book -- says a prime motivation for writing The Patient was to help patients understand better what a spell in hospital involves.
``Day in, day out, I sit across the desk from people who are planning their next holiday, they've just been married, they've just bought a house, they've just started a new job -- and I look down at a piece of paper that has words on it or numbers on it that are radically going to change their life for the worse over the next couple of years, or even curtail their life,'' Khadra says.``And I find people just aren't prepared. They have this sense that the health system is a benevolent creation of the government that will look after them; they aren't prepared spiritually, they aren't prepared physically and financially.''
But it's also a call to arms. Khadra himself has been a patient, after being diagnosed 10 years ago -- just as he and his wife had bought a new house, were raising two boys, and as their careers were taking off -- with a thyroid cancer that had already spread to his chest and neck.``I had an extensive period of treatment,'' he recalls. ``And what I saw of the health system then, and what continues -- if anything -- to get worse over the ensuing 10 years, is a health system that ... doesn't deliver compassionate health care to people most in need.
``And my basic feeling is that what has occurred in the 20-year period since the 1980s, when I trained, is a cancerous growth in the bureaucracy of health.``The basic aim of the bureaucracy is to avoid making mistakes. And what that creates is a paralysis of decision-making throughout the system that now has kneecapped every single hospital general manager, health leader, and nursing leader.'
Such a critique could not come at a more poignant time: NSW Health and its minister, John Della Bosca, have been deeply embarrassed this week by further revelations of chronic late payment of debts -- to the extent that some tradesmen and suppliers of drugs, food and other consumables are refusing to deal with hospitals in the west of the state.It chimes with Khadra's own experience. He tells of a general manager of one hospital he worked at who was unable to spend just $55 on a medical textbook without getting clearance from the central health department.
At the ward level, Khadra says the solution is to take the power away from the bureaucrats and give it instead to the clinicians and managers within each hospital who would then once again have the power, and incentive, to ensure their own units ran efficiently.
In a different way, power should be claimed by the patients themselves.``There wasn't a ward I could walk into 20 years ago, in any hospital, where I couldn't go to the nursing unit manager and say `How's Mr Jones', and that nurse would be able to tell me that his cousin visited yesterday, that his toenails have been clipped today, and that he's been moved six times overnight to help with his pressure sores,'' Khadra says, echoing a criticism that earned him widespread public support following the publication of his previous book.``Now, even from the nurse looking after the patient, I'd struggle to get any sense of what's going on with the patient.``What has happened?
What has happened is that local single-point accountability has been taken away from the hospital, so there isn't that opportunity for someone to say this needs to be changed.``If the ward is unclean, who do I go to? The boss of that cleaner is somewhere in town, because it's all outsourced. If the food that I'm putting in front of the patient is unappetising, who do you go to? It's all outsourced somewhere, and there are policies upon policies that obstruct any sort of feedback on that.''
Khadra -- who says he received overwhelming backing from his peers after the publication of Making the Cut in 2007 -- urges patients to ditch the passive role they suffered 50 years ago and claim a greater responsibility for their own care.He accepts he might receive a ``cold shoulder'' from one or two doctors who take umbrage at the portrayal of their profession in the character of David Johnson, an arrogant, glib and dismissive consultant urologist who regards patients as stupid and their questions as irritants to be discouraged.But he stresses the book also portrays ``a number of heroic doctors ... who really are compassionate, who really are competent''.
``The point that I make in The Patient -- if you are dealing with a doctor who isn't communicative, who isn't able to sit down and really go through the benefits and risks of a particular procedure, who isn't transparent about why they are doing it and involves you in a shared decision-making capacity -- perhaps you are going to the wrong doctor,'' he says.``I welcome it when my patients are questioning about every step of the way. Why am I having a PSA test? Why am I having a prostatectomy? What are the alternatives? What are the risks of this, what are the benefits?``Gee, I love those questions, truly -- it shows an involved, informed patient. And we know now there's some evidence to suggest that the outcomes for that type of patient are actually much better, because they are involved in their healthcare, they feel empowered in their own health care.
``Are there doctors out there who avoid that glare of light on their own practice? The answer is yes. But I can tell you the vast majority of competent doctors would welcome that type of questioning."
Monday, February 02, 2009
MISERY IN HARARE
20 . Letter from ... Harare
A Harare resident writes in Crikey 2.2.09:
I was standing in my bucket washing my body when the phone rang. I had to get out and fling a towel over my soapy body to go and answer it. It could be critical, as phones so seldom work. It was a friend who had been desperate to contact for four days.
After washing, the bucket water has to be lifted into the cistern for flushing the loo. Diarrhoea is a problem as we don't have enough water to keep the loos flushed. Then one becomes so exhausted that there is no strength for carrying and lifting water.
This morning I have carried six buckets of water from the tank outside the kitchen into the bathroom. The physical exertion is exhausting. Dish washing water and body washing water have to be heated on the stove and then carried to whereever they are needed. One litre of water in a plastic basin has to do for face washing and hand washing throughout the day, then it is carried outside to water plants.
The public do not receive statements for water, rates, electricity or telephone anymore. Each person has to go physically into town to their respective offices to find out what they have to pay. Imagine the enormous expense of travel, the waste of a full day queueing away from work and the frustration of dealing with arrogant, incompetent officials who imagine themselves as Gods.
It is ridiculous! The public are terrified to miss payment dates or amounts as they then get cut off permanently or are heavily fined, beyond their ability to pay.
I won't bore you further with the travails of life here. Tomorrow I am going to a friend to do my washing in her machine, which does not spin, so I will have to bring soaking washing back home to dry.
However, she has water and power, so that is a boon.
Send Crikey a letter from wherever you live or may be passing through to boss@crikey.com.au with the title "Letter from" in the subject field.
A Harare resident writes in Crikey 2.2.09:
I was standing in my bucket washing my body when the phone rang. I had to get out and fling a towel over my soapy body to go and answer it. It could be critical, as phones so seldom work. It was a friend who had been desperate to contact for four days.
After washing, the bucket water has to be lifted into the cistern for flushing the loo. Diarrhoea is a problem as we don't have enough water to keep the loos flushed. Then one becomes so exhausted that there is no strength for carrying and lifting water.
This morning I have carried six buckets of water from the tank outside the kitchen into the bathroom. The physical exertion is exhausting. Dish washing water and body washing water have to be heated on the stove and then carried to whereever they are needed. One litre of water in a plastic basin has to do for face washing and hand washing throughout the day, then it is carried outside to water plants.
The public do not receive statements for water, rates, electricity or telephone anymore. Each person has to go physically into town to their respective offices to find out what they have to pay. Imagine the enormous expense of travel, the waste of a full day queueing away from work and the frustration of dealing with arrogant, incompetent officials who imagine themselves as Gods.
It is ridiculous! The public are terrified to miss payment dates or amounts as they then get cut off permanently or are heavily fined, beyond their ability to pay.
I won't bore you further with the travails of life here. Tomorrow I am going to a friend to do my washing in her machine, which does not spin, so I will have to bring soaking washing back home to dry.
However, she has water and power, so that is a boon.
Send Crikey a letter from wherever you live or may be passing through to boss@crikey.com.au with the title "Letter from" in the subject field.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
MORE HOSPITAL HORRORS
Tammy Hams - lying in agony on hospital floor
By Richard Noone
January 30, 2009 12:00am
TAMMY Hams thought she was "going to die" when she was offered a blanket and told to lie on a waiting room floor because staff at her local hospital could not find her a bed.
Ms Hams was booked in for surgery at Wyong Hospital to remove possible cancerous lesions when doctors discovered a huge abscess causing "agonising pain".
The 29-year-old said she spent 3½ hours writhing in agony on the waiting room floor of the hospital's surgical ward on Wednesday before she was eventually given a bed.
Staff at the hospital "categorically deny" her claims.
Rees quiet on Rudd hospital bailout
The incident comes amid yet another hospital outrage, in which a 24-year-old man was discharged from Griffith Hospital early on Monday after complaining of sinus pain.
The following day he again presented to the hospital and was flown immediately to Sydney's St Vincent's where he died from unknown causes.
Tell us your hospital horror stories below
Greater Southern Health has launched an investigation into why he was discharged.
And in Dubbo, doctors are threatening to quit because they routinely run out of basic medications.
Ms Hams said her GP had been trying to get her into hospital since Friday when she began feeling stabbing pains in her stomach.
A biopsy four months ago revealed pre-cancerous lesions on her cervix, which if left would turn cancerous.
"I thought I was going to die," Ms Hams told The Daily Telegraph yesterday from her hospital bed.
"I have never been in that much pain in my life - it was agony."
She was booked-in for a hysterectomy and told to arrive at 9am.
Her mother Jenny Leatham said she was "crying and doubled-over in pain" and could not sit on the waiting room chairs or stand, so they pleaded for a bed.
"They gave her a blanket and said the best she could do was lie on the floor," Mr Leatham said.
"The staff were so nice and you could see they were upset about what was happening. This is just unfair, I'm not rubbishing the staff. There just wasn't enough beds.
"The system has to change."
A North Sydney Central Coast Health spokeswoman said an investigation found there was no shortage of beds and Ms Hams was "treated in a caring and timely manner".
"It is unacceptable for a patient to be expected to lie on the floor and staff on duty when Ms Hams arrived at the hospital deny making any such recommendation," the spokeswoman said.
The hospital argues she was assessed by an anaesthetist at 10.10am and that she asked for the blanket.
Mrs Leatham said by 12.30pm staff found her daughter a bed and she was operated on at 2pm.
When surgeons cut her open they discovered a huge abscess pushing on her cervix.
Unable to perform the hysterectomy they removed as much of the infection as they could and inserted a tube to drain it over the next seven to 10 days.
"If the abscess had burst while she was in the waiting room she would have died," Mrs Leatham said.
Wyong Hospital is just one of the state's many hospitals plagued with debt, bed shortages and a lack of specialist doctors.
Last week its emergency department - one of the busiest in the state - lost all but one of its specialist doctors to Gosford Hospital so it could retain its status as a teaching hospital.
Senior doctors at Dubbo Base Hospital threatened to walk off the job after they ran out of morphine because the hospital could not afford to pay pharmaceutical companies.
Patients in intensive care also sweltered for days in record temperatures because contractors could not be paid to fix the air conditioning.
The Greater Western Area Health Service reportedly owes more than $23 million to suppliers.
Many are no longer prepared to provide food or medical equipment.
The situation across the state is expected to get far worse before it gets any better.
A report by auditing firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers last month revealed the state's health budget would blow out by as much as $900 million by March if dramatic changes were not made.
Source: The Daily Telegraph
By Richard Noone
January 30, 2009 12:00am
TAMMY Hams thought she was "going to die" when she was offered a blanket and told to lie on a waiting room floor because staff at her local hospital could not find her a bed.
Ms Hams was booked in for surgery at Wyong Hospital to remove possible cancerous lesions when doctors discovered a huge abscess causing "agonising pain".
The 29-year-old said she spent 3½ hours writhing in agony on the waiting room floor of the hospital's surgical ward on Wednesday before she was eventually given a bed.
Staff at the hospital "categorically deny" her claims.
Rees quiet on Rudd hospital bailout
The incident comes amid yet another hospital outrage, in which a 24-year-old man was discharged from Griffith Hospital early on Monday after complaining of sinus pain.
The following day he again presented to the hospital and was flown immediately to Sydney's St Vincent's where he died from unknown causes.
Tell us your hospital horror stories below
Greater Southern Health has launched an investigation into why he was discharged.
And in Dubbo, doctors are threatening to quit because they routinely run out of basic medications.
Ms Hams said her GP had been trying to get her into hospital since Friday when she began feeling stabbing pains in her stomach.
A biopsy four months ago revealed pre-cancerous lesions on her cervix, which if left would turn cancerous.
"I thought I was going to die," Ms Hams told The Daily Telegraph yesterday from her hospital bed.
"I have never been in that much pain in my life - it was agony."
She was booked-in for a hysterectomy and told to arrive at 9am.
Her mother Jenny Leatham said she was "crying and doubled-over in pain" and could not sit on the waiting room chairs or stand, so they pleaded for a bed.
"They gave her a blanket and said the best she could do was lie on the floor," Mr Leatham said.
"The staff were so nice and you could see they were upset about what was happening. This is just unfair, I'm not rubbishing the staff. There just wasn't enough beds.
"The system has to change."
A North Sydney Central Coast Health spokeswoman said an investigation found there was no shortage of beds and Ms Hams was "treated in a caring and timely manner".
"It is unacceptable for a patient to be expected to lie on the floor and staff on duty when Ms Hams arrived at the hospital deny making any such recommendation," the spokeswoman said.
The hospital argues she was assessed by an anaesthetist at 10.10am and that she asked for the blanket.
Mrs Leatham said by 12.30pm staff found her daughter a bed and she was operated on at 2pm.
When surgeons cut her open they discovered a huge abscess pushing on her cervix.
Unable to perform the hysterectomy they removed as much of the infection as they could and inserted a tube to drain it over the next seven to 10 days.
"If the abscess had burst while she was in the waiting room she would have died," Mrs Leatham said.
Wyong Hospital is just one of the state's many hospitals plagued with debt, bed shortages and a lack of specialist doctors.
Last week its emergency department - one of the busiest in the state - lost all but one of its specialist doctors to Gosford Hospital so it could retain its status as a teaching hospital.
Senior doctors at Dubbo Base Hospital threatened to walk off the job after they ran out of morphine because the hospital could not afford to pay pharmaceutical companies.
Patients in intensive care also sweltered for days in record temperatures because contractors could not be paid to fix the air conditioning.
The Greater Western Area Health Service reportedly owes more than $23 million to suppliers.
Many are no longer prepared to provide food or medical equipment.
The situation across the state is expected to get far worse before it gets any better.
A report by auditing firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers last month revealed the state's health budget would blow out by as much as $900 million by March if dramatic changes were not made.
Source: The Daily Telegraph
JUSTICE KIRBY RETIRES
Justice Kirby retires, but has eyes on post with UN
David Marr, smh
January 31, 2009
Latest related coverage
Now history will be the judge
MONDAY will see Michael Kirby presiding all alone in the High Court over an immense party he has organised in his honour. After half a lifetime on the bench, he is packing his gavel and departing. He has no choice for in a few weeks he turns 70 and the constitution says he must go.
Traditionally only chief justices are formally farewelled by the court. The rest are expected to disappear without fuss. That isn't Kirby's way. He drew up a list of speakers for the occasion that begins with the federal Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, and a guestlist topped, according to rumour - a rumour fiercely denied - by the Dalai Lama.
Tickets are scarce. The judge's admirers will fill two courts. He is the longest-serving judicial officer in the nation, whose career on the bench began 35 years ago in the Whitlam era when Lionel Murphy appointed him to the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission. Controversies that began then are still running now.
On the High Court he earned the title the Great Dissenter. It's a title he loathes.
Addressing a conference of state and federal judges on Australia Day, Kirby played down his isolation on the bench.
"My disagreement in the disposition of proceedings that have gone to a full hearing stands in toto, as about 35 per cent." That still makes him the court's great loner.
His invitation warns: "Unfortunately the court will not be providing hospitality following the farewell." But he will barely have time to relax anyway. It may be his last, but Monday will be an ordinary working day.
At 2.15pm he will be back on the bench to hand down a last five judgments in which the Rudd Government will learn, among other things, whether Medicare is unconstitutional for imposing civil conscription on doctors.
Then it's out the door. He's hanging up his shingle in Phillip Street. Like many grandees of the bench, Kirby will now be available for private arbitration. Universities are lining up to have him teach. As always there are speeches to deliver on every subject under the sun.
But the job he really wants is with the United Nations. Last November he was recommended for the new UN Appeals Tribunal. But there is a hurdle yet to be overcome. He must be elected to
the position by the General Assembly. Kirby is facing the verdict of the world.
David Marr, smh
January 31, 2009
Latest related coverage
Now history will be the judge
MONDAY will see Michael Kirby presiding all alone in the High Court over an immense party he has organised in his honour. After half a lifetime on the bench, he is packing his gavel and departing. He has no choice for in a few weeks he turns 70 and the constitution says he must go.
Traditionally only chief justices are formally farewelled by the court. The rest are expected to disappear without fuss. That isn't Kirby's way. He drew up a list of speakers for the occasion that begins with the federal Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, and a guestlist topped, according to rumour - a rumour fiercely denied - by the Dalai Lama.
Tickets are scarce. The judge's admirers will fill two courts. He is the longest-serving judicial officer in the nation, whose career on the bench began 35 years ago in the Whitlam era when Lionel Murphy appointed him to the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission. Controversies that began then are still running now.
On the High Court he earned the title the Great Dissenter. It's a title he loathes.
Addressing a conference of state and federal judges on Australia Day, Kirby played down his isolation on the bench.
"My disagreement in the disposition of proceedings that have gone to a full hearing stands in toto, as about 35 per cent." That still makes him the court's great loner.
His invitation warns: "Unfortunately the court will not be providing hospitality following the farewell." But he will barely have time to relax anyway. It may be his last, but Monday will be an ordinary working day.
At 2.15pm he will be back on the bench to hand down a last five judgments in which the Rudd Government will learn, among other things, whether Medicare is unconstitutional for imposing civil conscription on doctors.
Then it's out the door. He's hanging up his shingle in Phillip Street. Like many grandees of the bench, Kirby will now be available for private arbitration. Universities are lining up to have him teach. As always there are speeches to deliver on every subject under the sun.
But the job he really wants is with the United Nations. Last November he was recommended for the new UN Appeals Tribunal. But there is a hurdle yet to be overcome. He must be elected to
the position by the General Assembly. Kirby is facing the verdict of the world.
Friday, January 30, 2009
BACK TO WORKCHOICES IN WA
WA: Individual agreements part of new state IR regime: Buswell
30 January 2009 Content provided to you by AAP.
By Jo Prichard
Individual workplace agreements will be part of a new industrial relations regime in Western Australia, Treasurer Troy Buswell says.
Mr Buswell told a Senate committee inquiring into the Fair Work Bill in Perth that WA will not be signing up to the new federal system.Employers should have the flexibility to be able to make individual contracts a precondition of employment, he told the inquiry on Thursday.
NSW Senator Doug Cameron, a member of the committee, asked Mr Buswell how it would work.
"That would be part of the discussion and the understanding of the decision to take a job or not," Mr Buswell replied.
"So it's 'my way or the highway' ... back to Work Choices?" Senator Cameron asked."It's our view that ... (employees and employers should) arrange their affairs to have flexibility as they see fit,"
Mr Buswell said."You don't have to take the job, at the end of the day."
Outside the hearing, Mr Buswell said it was not the state's intention to return to building a new industrial relations system.
"In most aspects, the Fair Work Bill will provide a base to start from in recrafting a new WA industrial relations system, but we acknowledge we do have some issues with some aspects of that," he said.
"We're not going to revisit industrial relations history in Western Australia," he said, referring to the former WA IR regime run by Liberal minister Graham Kierath.
"Our starting point will be to examine the Fair Work legislation and then to work from there."
Unions WA Secretary Dave Robinson said it was clear Mr Buswell planned to adopt part of the former federal government's Work Choices legislation in the new WA laws.
"He is saying ... you have to sign up to an individual flexibility agreement before you get the job ... that is very very similar to what occurred under Work Choices," Mr Robinson said.
© 2008 AAP Disclaimer
30 January 2009 Content provided to you by AAP.
By Jo Prichard
Individual workplace agreements will be part of a new industrial relations regime in Western Australia, Treasurer Troy Buswell says.
Mr Buswell told a Senate committee inquiring into the Fair Work Bill in Perth that WA will not be signing up to the new federal system.Employers should have the flexibility to be able to make individual contracts a precondition of employment, he told the inquiry on Thursday.
NSW Senator Doug Cameron, a member of the committee, asked Mr Buswell how it would work.
"That would be part of the discussion and the understanding of the decision to take a job or not," Mr Buswell replied.
"So it's 'my way or the highway' ... back to Work Choices?" Senator Cameron asked."It's our view that ... (employees and employers should) arrange their affairs to have flexibility as they see fit,"
Mr Buswell said."You don't have to take the job, at the end of the day."
Outside the hearing, Mr Buswell said it was not the state's intention to return to building a new industrial relations system.
"In most aspects, the Fair Work Bill will provide a base to start from in recrafting a new WA industrial relations system, but we acknowledge we do have some issues with some aspects of that," he said.
"We're not going to revisit industrial relations history in Western Australia," he said, referring to the former WA IR regime run by Liberal minister Graham Kierath.
"Our starting point will be to examine the Fair Work legislation and then to work from there."
Unions WA Secretary Dave Robinson said it was clear Mr Buswell planned to adopt part of the former federal government's Work Choices legislation in the new WA laws.
"He is saying ... you have to sign up to an individual flexibility agreement before you get the job ... that is very very similar to what occurred under Work Choices," Mr Robinson said.
© 2008 AAP Disclaimer
SOLDIER SUICIDES HIT RECORD IN 2008: US ARMY
Soldier suicides hit record in 2008: US Army
January 30, 2009, smh
Suicides among active duty soldiers hit a record high last year for the second year in a row, the US Army reported, acknowledging that stress on the war-time force was a major factor.
The number of soldiers who took their lives in 2008 rose to as many as 143 from 115 the previous year, the army said.
Among the deaths, 128 have been "confirmed suicides and 15 are still being investigated for a determination," said Lieutenant Michelle Martin-Hing, adding that on average "90 percent of unconfirmed go on to be confirmed."
The total has climbed in each of the past four years as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have intensified, according to the army.
"Why do the numbers continue to go up?" asked Army Secretary Pete Geren. "We do not know."
Army officials said no single factor explained the increased incidence of suicides.
But General Peter Chiarelli, vice chief of the army, tied the rise to the lengthened combat deployments and high tempo of operations that have strained soldiers and their families.
"There is no doubt in my mind that stress is a factor in the trend we are seeing," he said.
Army statistics released Thursday found that 30 percent of those who committed suicide last year were deployed at the time of their death, and of those more than three quarters were on their first deployment.
About 35 percent had never been deployed before; another 35 percent killed themselves after being deployed, in most cases more than a year after returning to their home bases.
Last year's suicide rate among active duty soldiers rose to 20.2 per 100,000, surpassing a demographically adjusted national suicide rate of 19.5 per 100,000 in 2005, the latest year on record.
The army has responded to the growing problem with more suicide prevention programs, efforts to screen soldiers for mental health problems, and campaigns to reduce the stigma that prevents soldiers from seeking treatment.
But officials indicated it was unclear how well they were working.
Chiarelli announced that units throughout the army will undergo special training sessions beginning February 15 to teach soldiers what to do if they see behaviors in themselves or their friends that could lead to suicide.
It also has enlisted the National Institute of Mental Health to do a long-study of factors affecting soldiers' mental health, and identify ways to decrease the incidence of suicides.
© 2009 AFPThis story is sourced direct from an overseas news agency as an additional service to readers.
January 30, 2009, smh
Suicides among active duty soldiers hit a record high last year for the second year in a row, the US Army reported, acknowledging that stress on the war-time force was a major factor.
The number of soldiers who took their lives in 2008 rose to as many as 143 from 115 the previous year, the army said.
Among the deaths, 128 have been "confirmed suicides and 15 are still being investigated for a determination," said Lieutenant Michelle Martin-Hing, adding that on average "90 percent of unconfirmed go on to be confirmed."
The total has climbed in each of the past four years as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have intensified, according to the army.
"Why do the numbers continue to go up?" asked Army Secretary Pete Geren. "We do not know."
Army officials said no single factor explained the increased incidence of suicides.
But General Peter Chiarelli, vice chief of the army, tied the rise to the lengthened combat deployments and high tempo of operations that have strained soldiers and their families.
"There is no doubt in my mind that stress is a factor in the trend we are seeing," he said.
Army statistics released Thursday found that 30 percent of those who committed suicide last year were deployed at the time of their death, and of those more than three quarters were on their first deployment.
About 35 percent had never been deployed before; another 35 percent killed themselves after being deployed, in most cases more than a year after returning to their home bases.
Last year's suicide rate among active duty soldiers rose to 20.2 per 100,000, surpassing a demographically adjusted national suicide rate of 19.5 per 100,000 in 2005, the latest year on record.
The army has responded to the growing problem with more suicide prevention programs, efforts to screen soldiers for mental health problems, and campaigns to reduce the stigma that prevents soldiers from seeking treatment.
But officials indicated it was unclear how well they were working.
Chiarelli announced that units throughout the army will undergo special training sessions beginning February 15 to teach soldiers what to do if they see behaviors in themselves or their friends that could lead to suicide.
It also has enlisted the National Institute of Mental Health to do a long-study of factors affecting soldiers' mental health, and identify ways to decrease the incidence of suicides.
© 2009 AFPThis story is sourced direct from an overseas news agency as an additional service to readers.
GWAHS BUREAUCRATS WON'T BE SACKED
Minister won't sack health bosses over unpaid bills
Louise Hall and Kate Benson, smh
January 30, 2009
Latest related coverage:
Federal hospitals takeover
Out-of-pocket doctor quits in disgust
While the creditors wait, the minister spins and spins
THE Health Minister, John Della Bosca, has refused to sack any of the chief executives in charge of the eight area health services and the Children's Hospital at Westmead, despite all but two failing to meet NSW Health's strict creditor payment policy.
The Area Performance Agreement for chief executives says paying all creditors within the benchmark 45 days is a key performance indicator.
In 2006, the State Government promised to tighten controls to ensure that creditors are paid on time after an Auditor-General's report found the common practice of not paying bills was leading to the suspension of services, delays in supplying goods and additional time wasted in trying to have the orders filled.
The then-health minister, John Hatzistergos, insisted that area health service chief executives would be held personally accountable for unpaid bills.
"I've made it quite clear to area health chief executives … that their obligations and their performance is going to be measured by the extent to which they comply with the creditor payments policy," he said.
But despite figures released by NSW Health on Wednesday showing there was $117.5 million in overdue invoices across the system at the end of this month, not one senior bureaucrat has been held accountable.
In a clear backflip on his predecessor's promise, Mr Della Bosca said yesterday: "It's not about blaming individuals. I'm making everybody in the system accountable [and] the only way you can do this is by sharing the responsibility."
However, the chief executive of Greater Western Area Health Service, Claire Blizard, told the Herald she was ashamed to walk the streets of Dubbo after meat, fruit, vegetables and drug supplies to scores of hospitals had been cut off after bills went unpaid for months.
As doctors in the state's west threatened to walk off the job at 5pm today, Mr Della Bosca authorised an emergency $1.8 million payroll run last night to cover months of outstanding invoices from numerous visiting medical officers in Dubbo, Bathurst and Orange. "We're on top of that problem," he said.
Mr Della Bosca said the Greater Western service covered an area the size of Germany and about 100 health facilities, which had led to the difficulties in paying bills.
He dismissed calls for a return to local hospital boards but did not rule out a federal takeover of health. "The health system for a few generations has been a joint enterprise by Commonwealth and state governments and clearly that … has worked well when you consider the entire postwar period, and that relationship has led to us having one of the best health systems in the world."
The Australian Medical Association's NSW president, Brian Morton, said a number of doctors had already resigned from the public hospital system because they felt they could not offer safe care. "Inability to pay suppliers is symptomatic of deeper problems and the ultimate concern is the welfare of patients," he said.
The chairwoman of the medical staff council at Orange Base Hospital, Ruth Arnold, said doctors' hands were tied. They could insist on the area health service paying interest if their bills were not settled in 45 days but the "service is so strapped for cash that we would rather the money be spent on patient care".
She said some doctors had been paid since October but it was unacceptable that they had to make a fuss before they got their money.
Louise Hall and Kate Benson, smh
January 30, 2009
Latest related coverage:
Federal hospitals takeover
Out-of-pocket doctor quits in disgust
While the creditors wait, the minister spins and spins
THE Health Minister, John Della Bosca, has refused to sack any of the chief executives in charge of the eight area health services and the Children's Hospital at Westmead, despite all but two failing to meet NSW Health's strict creditor payment policy.
The Area Performance Agreement for chief executives says paying all creditors within the benchmark 45 days is a key performance indicator.
In 2006, the State Government promised to tighten controls to ensure that creditors are paid on time after an Auditor-General's report found the common practice of not paying bills was leading to the suspension of services, delays in supplying goods and additional time wasted in trying to have the orders filled.
The then-health minister, John Hatzistergos, insisted that area health service chief executives would be held personally accountable for unpaid bills.
"I've made it quite clear to area health chief executives … that their obligations and their performance is going to be measured by the extent to which they comply with the creditor payments policy," he said.
But despite figures released by NSW Health on Wednesday showing there was $117.5 million in overdue invoices across the system at the end of this month, not one senior bureaucrat has been held accountable.
In a clear backflip on his predecessor's promise, Mr Della Bosca said yesterday: "It's not about blaming individuals. I'm making everybody in the system accountable [and] the only way you can do this is by sharing the responsibility."
However, the chief executive of Greater Western Area Health Service, Claire Blizard, told the Herald she was ashamed to walk the streets of Dubbo after meat, fruit, vegetables and drug supplies to scores of hospitals had been cut off after bills went unpaid for months.
As doctors in the state's west threatened to walk off the job at 5pm today, Mr Della Bosca authorised an emergency $1.8 million payroll run last night to cover months of outstanding invoices from numerous visiting medical officers in Dubbo, Bathurst and Orange. "We're on top of that problem," he said.
Mr Della Bosca said the Greater Western service covered an area the size of Germany and about 100 health facilities, which had led to the difficulties in paying bills.
He dismissed calls for a return to local hospital boards but did not rule out a federal takeover of health. "The health system for a few generations has been a joint enterprise by Commonwealth and state governments and clearly that … has worked well when you consider the entire postwar period, and that relationship has led to us having one of the best health systems in the world."
The Australian Medical Association's NSW president, Brian Morton, said a number of doctors had already resigned from the public hospital system because they felt they could not offer safe care. "Inability to pay suppliers is symptomatic of deeper problems and the ultimate concern is the welfare of patients," he said.
The chairwoman of the medical staff council at Orange Base Hospital, Ruth Arnold, said doctors' hands were tied. They could insist on the area health service paying interest if their bills were not settled in 45 days but the "service is so strapped for cash that we would rather the money be spent on patient care".
She said some doctors had been paid since October but it was unacceptable that they had to make a fuss before they got their money.
WALL STREET MORALLY BANKRUPT
Wall Street is morally and financially bankrupt
Adam Schwab writes in Crikey 30.1.09:
Last year a German survey claimed that investment bankers were as "unpopular as convicted criminals and prostitutes". It is possible however that the world’s oldest professionals are being unfairly slighted in the comparison. Yesterday, the New York State Comptroller stated that despite US banks receiving around US$300 billion dollars in taxpayer handouts, its executives still saw fit to doll out an estimated US$18.4 billion in bonuses -- the sixth highest on record.
The New York Times noted that the quantum bonus payments made was similar to those paid in 2004 -- when the Dow Jones index was around 10,000 (it is now 8,149). President Obama dubbed the bonus payments as being "shameful" and "the height of irresponsibility".
But it isn’t only bonus payments which have infuriated Main Street and the White House.
Until recently, Citigroup was the world’s largest financial institution. Not any more. In the past six months, Citi has received US$45 billion in taxpayer funds, which is more than double Citi’s current market capitalisation of US$22 billion. Citi also received a government guarantee on more than US$300 billion of toxic assets stuck on the bank’s books. Notwithstanding the bailout, Citi executives only last Monday saw fit to cancel an order for a Dassault Falcon 7X corporate jet, which was ordered back in 2005 was set to cost the stricken bank US$50 million.
One would have thought that someone at Citi would have cancelled the order last year, around the time that they accepted the taxpayer bailout. Apparently not. Or when the bank announced a fourth quarter loss last year of US$8.3 billion. Nup. Instead, it took a rebuke from President Obama for Citi to finally realize that five corporate jets were probably enough for a morally and (and without government help) financially bankrupt institution.
But while Citi appears to have the market cornered in incompetence, it appears that pure greed has a new name, and its name is John Thain. Thain was the CEO of Merrill Lynch, which was recently acquired by Bank of America. BoA was not what one would describe as a willing suitor, having only completed the acquisition after being prodded by the Government and tempted with another US$20 billion from taxpayers.
The second bailout was needed because in its last three months of existence, Merrill managed to lose US$15 billion. Notwithstanding the red ink, Thain requested that Merrill pay him a bonus of US$10 million for completing the BoA sale (Thain reluctantly withdrew the request when it became public last December). Aside from the fact that the transaction only happened because of a taxpayer bailout, Thain didn’t exactly need the money -- he received US$83 million in remuneration last year and is believed to have been paid around US$300 million during his time at Goldman Sachs.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Thain has joined Tyco’s Dennis Kozlowski in setting new standards of Wall Street greed. You may remember Kozlowski as the CEO who accepted loans of more than US$25 million from Tyco to decorate his New York apartment, most notably, spending US$6,000 on the world’s most famous shower curtain. Dennis later spent US$1 million of company funds on his wife’s 40th birthday party in Sardinia, before being jailed for larceny.
While Thain is not believed to have purchased any gold shower curtains, he did see fit to spend US$1,405 on the world’s most famous rubbish bin -- a "parchment waste paper basket". In total, Thain spent more than US$1.22 million office decorations (including a US$87,784 rug and a US$25,713 mahogany pedestal) -- that money of course came from Merrill shareholders, or taxpayers.
But perhaps Citi and Thain are merely creations of Wall Street -- of a system which is designed to take other people’s money and give it to bankers and brokers, regardless of the value created (or destroyed) by them. The system of entitlement is so engrained that despite the US financial system requiring taxpayer bailouts to survive, "a poll of 900 financial industry employees released on Wednesday by eFinancialCareers.com, a job search Web site, found that while nearly eight out of 10 got bonuses, 46 percent thought they deserved more."
Adam Schwab writes in Crikey 30.1.09:
Last year a German survey claimed that investment bankers were as "unpopular as convicted criminals and prostitutes". It is possible however that the world’s oldest professionals are being unfairly slighted in the comparison. Yesterday, the New York State Comptroller stated that despite US banks receiving around US$300 billion dollars in taxpayer handouts, its executives still saw fit to doll out an estimated US$18.4 billion in bonuses -- the sixth highest on record.
The New York Times noted that the quantum bonus payments made was similar to those paid in 2004 -- when the Dow Jones index was around 10,000 (it is now 8,149). President Obama dubbed the bonus payments as being "shameful" and "the height of irresponsibility".
But it isn’t only bonus payments which have infuriated Main Street and the White House.
Until recently, Citigroup was the world’s largest financial institution. Not any more. In the past six months, Citi has received US$45 billion in taxpayer funds, which is more than double Citi’s current market capitalisation of US$22 billion. Citi also received a government guarantee on more than US$300 billion of toxic assets stuck on the bank’s books. Notwithstanding the bailout, Citi executives only last Monday saw fit to cancel an order for a Dassault Falcon 7X corporate jet, which was ordered back in 2005 was set to cost the stricken bank US$50 million.
One would have thought that someone at Citi would have cancelled the order last year, around the time that they accepted the taxpayer bailout. Apparently not. Or when the bank announced a fourth quarter loss last year of US$8.3 billion. Nup. Instead, it took a rebuke from President Obama for Citi to finally realize that five corporate jets were probably enough for a morally and (and without government help) financially bankrupt institution.
But while Citi appears to have the market cornered in incompetence, it appears that pure greed has a new name, and its name is John Thain. Thain was the CEO of Merrill Lynch, which was recently acquired by Bank of America. BoA was not what one would describe as a willing suitor, having only completed the acquisition after being prodded by the Government and tempted with another US$20 billion from taxpayers.
The second bailout was needed because in its last three months of existence, Merrill managed to lose US$15 billion. Notwithstanding the red ink, Thain requested that Merrill pay him a bonus of US$10 million for completing the BoA sale (Thain reluctantly withdrew the request when it became public last December). Aside from the fact that the transaction only happened because of a taxpayer bailout, Thain didn’t exactly need the money -- he received US$83 million in remuneration last year and is believed to have been paid around US$300 million during his time at Goldman Sachs.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Thain has joined Tyco’s Dennis Kozlowski in setting new standards of Wall Street greed. You may remember Kozlowski as the CEO who accepted loans of more than US$25 million from Tyco to decorate his New York apartment, most notably, spending US$6,000 on the world’s most famous shower curtain. Dennis later spent US$1 million of company funds on his wife’s 40th birthday party in Sardinia, before being jailed for larceny.
While Thain is not believed to have purchased any gold shower curtains, he did see fit to spend US$1,405 on the world’s most famous rubbish bin -- a "parchment waste paper basket". In total, Thain spent more than US$1.22 million office decorations (including a US$87,784 rug and a US$25,713 mahogany pedestal) -- that money of course came from Merrill shareholders, or taxpayers.
But perhaps Citi and Thain are merely creations of Wall Street -- of a system which is designed to take other people’s money and give it to bankers and brokers, regardless of the value created (or destroyed) by them. The system of entitlement is so engrained that despite the US financial system requiring taxpayer bailouts to survive, "a poll of 900 financial industry employees released on Wednesday by eFinancialCareers.com, a job search Web site, found that while nearly eight out of 10 got bonuses, 46 percent thought they deserved more."
Thursday, January 29, 2009
SUMMIT FAILS ZIMBABWE
SADC Summit fails Zimbabwe, focus shifts to African Union
Zimbabwe Information Centre Inc, Australia, January 28, 2009
The poverty of leadership at the Southern African Development Community was rudely exposed this week when its leaders claimed they had resolved the crisis in Zimbabwe, and the party which won the march 29 2008 elections there said the opposite. The Movement for Democratic
Change will hold a meeting this Friday to determine its response, but the immediate focus will be the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa from February 1-3, 2009.
Reported cases of cholera have now passed 53,000 and the number dead is more than 2,800.
This is worse than the death toll from three weeks of intensive Israeli bombardment and assaults on the population of Gaza.
Despite dire predictions that it had been beaten into submission, MDC held to its principled stand that the people of Zimbabwe need urgent help and that it can only come from a government where MDC has real power to make change. MDC deserves admiration for this constancy, but more so, it needs the urgent support of the African Union to end the deadly farce presided over by SADC and Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF.
Zimbabwe Information Centre Inc, Australia, January 28, 2009
The poverty of leadership at the Southern African Development Community was rudely exposed this week when its leaders claimed they had resolved the crisis in Zimbabwe, and the party which won the march 29 2008 elections there said the opposite. The Movement for Democratic
Change will hold a meeting this Friday to determine its response, but the immediate focus will be the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa from February 1-3, 2009.
Reported cases of cholera have now passed 53,000 and the number dead is more than 2,800.
This is worse than the death toll from three weeks of intensive Israeli bombardment and assaults on the population of Gaza.
Despite dire predictions that it had been beaten into submission, MDC held to its principled stand that the people of Zimbabwe need urgent help and that it can only come from a government where MDC has real power to make change. MDC deserves admiration for this constancy, but more so, it needs the urgent support of the African Union to end the deadly farce presided over by SADC and Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
ENs AND AINs REPLACE RNs
Red News Readers,
Judith Kiejda may claim in the Letters Column of the Sydney Morning Herald that the claims that the Nurses Association sanctions the use of Assistants in Nursing in place of Registered and Enrolled nurses are wrong, but the facts are that the nursing workforce is deskilling. Enrolled Nurses and Assistants in Nursing do fill Registered Nurse positions on a one for one basis. This process has been well underway for over 8 years now, despite a lengthy dispute over these issues at RPAH in 2001-3, and only now, when the change to Enrolled Nurse education is being implemented, has the Association put on the Agenda with the State Government as part of the Mini Budget package, the formulation of ratios of Enrolled Nurses and Assistants in Nursing to Registered Nurse positions. Even where nurses work in teams, there is a heavy burden on the registered nurse who is responsible for supervising Enrolled Nurses and Assistants in Nursing in their clinical work. If there is a mix of a Registered Nurses, Enrolled Nurses and Assistants in Nursing where formerly there was a team of Registered Nurses, the public cannot expect the same standard of care.
Jenny Haines
LETTER FROM JUDITH KIEJDA, 28.1.09
No nursing shortcuts
Claims that the NSW Nurses Association "sanctions the use of assistants in nursing in place of registered and enrolled nurses" (Letters, January 26) are wrong.
It is inappropriate and unsafe to replace registered nurses with less qualified nurses as a shortcut to overcoming the registered nurse shortage or to cut costs.
It is sometimes acceptable to build nursing teams in which enrolled nurses and assistants in nursing support registered nurses. However, the skill mix must be properly assessed and a clear role identified for assistants, appropriate to their level of knowledge and skill.
The association wants a recognised qualification for nursing assistants, which they should have before being employed.
Judith Kiejda Acting general secretary, NSW Nurses Association, Camperdown
LETTER FROM AN EN, 28.1.09
From my experience of nursing training - through TAFE as a medication-endorsed enrolled nurse and then as a registered nurse through university - I believe the paid TAFE/hospital model should remain.
It should be a mandatory precursor for degree-level studies. You cannot pass through training as an enrolled nurse and not come out with an appreciation of the realities of nursing.
A government with vision would view the paid-training model as a means of increasing the number and quality of nurses. It represents a gamble in terms of participants remaining in nursing after enrolment, but those who do are there because they are motivated and interested - something money cannot buy. They are also in a position to make a more meaningful and better qualified (and better paid) contribution while they do their degree.
The move to offer training at cost through the private sector may make more places available to those who can pay, but this should not be to the detriment of those who cannot. Several colleagues in my group at TAFE - all excellent contributors to the profession - would not be where they are now without the state's investment in human capital.
Wendy Peddell. Newtown.
Judith Kiejda may claim in the Letters Column of the Sydney Morning Herald that the claims that the Nurses Association sanctions the use of Assistants in Nursing in place of Registered and Enrolled nurses are wrong, but the facts are that the nursing workforce is deskilling. Enrolled Nurses and Assistants in Nursing do fill Registered Nurse positions on a one for one basis. This process has been well underway for over 8 years now, despite a lengthy dispute over these issues at RPAH in 2001-3, and only now, when the change to Enrolled Nurse education is being implemented, has the Association put on the Agenda with the State Government as part of the Mini Budget package, the formulation of ratios of Enrolled Nurses and Assistants in Nursing to Registered Nurse positions. Even where nurses work in teams, there is a heavy burden on the registered nurse who is responsible for supervising Enrolled Nurses and Assistants in Nursing in their clinical work. If there is a mix of a Registered Nurses, Enrolled Nurses and Assistants in Nursing where formerly there was a team of Registered Nurses, the public cannot expect the same standard of care.
Jenny Haines
LETTER FROM JUDITH KIEJDA, 28.1.09
No nursing shortcuts
Claims that the NSW Nurses Association "sanctions the use of assistants in nursing in place of registered and enrolled nurses" (Letters, January 26) are wrong.
It is inappropriate and unsafe to replace registered nurses with less qualified nurses as a shortcut to overcoming the registered nurse shortage or to cut costs.
It is sometimes acceptable to build nursing teams in which enrolled nurses and assistants in nursing support registered nurses. However, the skill mix must be properly assessed and a clear role identified for assistants, appropriate to their level of knowledge and skill.
The association wants a recognised qualification for nursing assistants, which they should have before being employed.
Judith Kiejda Acting general secretary, NSW Nurses Association, Camperdown
LETTER FROM AN EN, 28.1.09
From my experience of nursing training - through TAFE as a medication-endorsed enrolled nurse and then as a registered nurse through university - I believe the paid TAFE/hospital model should remain.
It should be a mandatory precursor for degree-level studies. You cannot pass through training as an enrolled nurse and not come out with an appreciation of the realities of nursing.
A government with vision would view the paid-training model as a means of increasing the number and quality of nurses. It represents a gamble in terms of participants remaining in nursing after enrolment, but those who do are there because they are motivated and interested - something money cannot buy. They are also in a position to make a more meaningful and better qualified (and better paid) contribution while they do their degree.
The move to offer training at cost through the private sector may make more places available to those who can pay, but this should not be to the detriment of those who cannot. Several colleagues in my group at TAFE - all excellent contributors to the profession - would not be where they are now without the state's investment in human capital.
Wendy Peddell. Newtown.
Monday, January 26, 2009
UNTRAINED NURSES COMPROMISE CARE
Red News Readers,
My letter to the SMH in support of a letter from a nurse today, 26.1.09:
I couldn't have said it better myself Andrew Hopton of Prestons. The public need to carefully take note of Andrew's letter. Despite the money spent on the Garling Report, despite the public concern about standards of care in the health system, NSW Health and health system managers are continuing to deskill the nursing workforce in the name of budgetary efficiency, certainly not better standards of care, and those who should be watchdogs and raising concerns and issues of public interest. are actually puppy dogs lying on their backs getting their tummies scratched! It is time for the public to be alert and alarmed.
Jenny Haines
Letter:
As an enrolled nurse, and trainee registered nurse, I write in the hope that John Della Bosca and Jillian Skinner will take note. Axing an avenue for people to become enrolled nurses and then registered nurses risks plunging the state's health care into further peril ("Infighting leaves nurses in limbo", January 23).
Look at the figures for nursing released by the Health Department. Even if every nurse were to graduate in 2010, there would still be a big shortfall in nursing numbers.
This cannot be solved by the introduction of an underqualified workforce. The Labour Party (and Mr Della Bosca in particular) is flagrantly abusing the health care system with the introduction of assistants in nursing to substitute for registered and enrolled nurses.
Worse is that the Nurses Association of NSW has allowed the rights of nurses to be eroded, and sanctions the use of assistants in nursing in place of registered and enrolled nurses in hospitals and mental health units.
The public's days of receiving treatment from qualified registered and enrolled nurses are numbered as a result. This means patients may be taken care of by somebody who is underqualified and unregistered, and therefore unaccountable for their actions on the hospital floor, and the overall standard of care in the health system will suffer. Lives are at risk.
If Mr Della Bosca has faith in the introduction of this system, presumably he would not mind if the treatment of a member of his family were in the hands of such a person.
Andrew Hopton Prestons
My letter to the SMH in support of a letter from a nurse today, 26.1.09:
I couldn't have said it better myself Andrew Hopton of Prestons. The public need to carefully take note of Andrew's letter. Despite the money spent on the Garling Report, despite the public concern about standards of care in the health system, NSW Health and health system managers are continuing to deskill the nursing workforce in the name of budgetary efficiency, certainly not better standards of care, and those who should be watchdogs and raising concerns and issues of public interest. are actually puppy dogs lying on their backs getting their tummies scratched! It is time for the public to be alert and alarmed.
Jenny Haines
Letter:
As an enrolled nurse, and trainee registered nurse, I write in the hope that John Della Bosca and Jillian Skinner will take note. Axing an avenue for people to become enrolled nurses and then registered nurses risks plunging the state's health care into further peril ("Infighting leaves nurses in limbo", January 23).
Look at the figures for nursing released by the Health Department. Even if every nurse were to graduate in 2010, there would still be a big shortfall in nursing numbers.
This cannot be solved by the introduction of an underqualified workforce. The Labour Party (and Mr Della Bosca in particular) is flagrantly abusing the health care system with the introduction of assistants in nursing to substitute for registered and enrolled nurses.
Worse is that the Nurses Association of NSW has allowed the rights of nurses to be eroded, and sanctions the use of assistants in nursing in place of registered and enrolled nurses in hospitals and mental health units.
The public's days of receiving treatment from qualified registered and enrolled nurses are numbered as a result. This means patients may be taken care of by somebody who is underqualified and unregistered, and therefore unaccountable for their actions on the hospital floor, and the overall standard of care in the health system will suffer. Lives are at risk.
If Mr Della Bosca has faith in the introduction of this system, presumably he would not mind if the treatment of a member of his family were in the hands of such a person.
Andrew Hopton Prestons
Sunday, January 25, 2009
CRIMINAL NURSES ?
Victorian Nurses Board approves 103 registrations of criminal nurses
By Grant McArthur, Herald Sun
January 24, 2009 03:47am
NURSES guilty of manslaughter, sex offences, arson and torturing animals have been allowed to care for the sick and vulnerable in Victoria.In the past three years the Nurses Board approved registration of 103 nurses who had admitted being found guilty of crimes such as theft, stalking, drug trafficking, possessing child pornography and manslaughter.
The board cancelled registration of two nurses because of their criminal pasts, while the results on another three nurses are unclear, the Herald Sun reports.
Patient advocates and the Opposition want an immediate investigation of registration of some nurses, as well as the process, in light of documents obtained by the Herald Sun through Freedom of Information requests.
But the Nurses Board says it is not concerned that at least 103 of Victoria's 86,000 registered nurses have serious criminal records. Its says its investigation processes ensure public safety.
In 2006 it became mandatory for nurses to disclose their crimes when renewing their registration each year.
Since then the board has been told of:
A NURSE convicted of manslaughter in 1994 whom it re-registered.
THREE nurses guilty of indecent assault who had their registration renewed.
TWO nurses guilty of cruelty to animals.
THREE nurses guilty of recklessly causing serious injury and others who committed serious assault, common assault, unlawful assault, intentionally causing serious injury and negligently causing serious injury.
TWO nurses convicted of stalking.
A NURSE caught with a drug of dependence and taking it into a prison in 2005.
A HOST of theft, fraud and social security offences.
In one instance the board renewed a nurse's registration despite being aware of 19 convictions for arson.
Some offences date back many years, but all were disclosed to the board after 2006.
Medical Error Action Group spokeswoman Lorraine Long accused the state's medical authorities of placing the interests of nurses above those of their patients.
"The Nurses Board is looking at the rights of nurses, but the patients are part of this equation and where are their rights? Who is protecting them?" she said.
Health Services Commissioner Beth Wilson said she had not urged an investigation because the new disclosure requirements may lead to better processes. "When you get a whole lot of disclosures all at once like this you can't possibly investigate them all, particularly when some of them go back to the 1980s . . . What is more important is the nurse's record. Have they been a good nurse and are they well supervised?
"It might be that sometimes people who make mistakes in their life could actually be better nurses."
Opposition health spokeswoman Helen Shardey demanded the board investigate the most serious offences
By Grant McArthur, Herald Sun
January 24, 2009 03:47am
NURSES guilty of manslaughter, sex offences, arson and torturing animals have been allowed to care for the sick and vulnerable in Victoria.In the past three years the Nurses Board approved registration of 103 nurses who had admitted being found guilty of crimes such as theft, stalking, drug trafficking, possessing child pornography and manslaughter.
The board cancelled registration of two nurses because of their criminal pasts, while the results on another three nurses are unclear, the Herald Sun reports.
Patient advocates and the Opposition want an immediate investigation of registration of some nurses, as well as the process, in light of documents obtained by the Herald Sun through Freedom of Information requests.
But the Nurses Board says it is not concerned that at least 103 of Victoria's 86,000 registered nurses have serious criminal records. Its says its investigation processes ensure public safety.
In 2006 it became mandatory for nurses to disclose their crimes when renewing their registration each year.
Since then the board has been told of:
A NURSE convicted of manslaughter in 1994 whom it re-registered.
THREE nurses guilty of indecent assault who had their registration renewed.
TWO nurses guilty of cruelty to animals.
THREE nurses guilty of recklessly causing serious injury and others who committed serious assault, common assault, unlawful assault, intentionally causing serious injury and negligently causing serious injury.
TWO nurses convicted of stalking.
A NURSE caught with a drug of dependence and taking it into a prison in 2005.
A HOST of theft, fraud and social security offences.
In one instance the board renewed a nurse's registration despite being aware of 19 convictions for arson.
Some offences date back many years, but all were disclosed to the board after 2006.
Medical Error Action Group spokeswoman Lorraine Long accused the state's medical authorities of placing the interests of nurses above those of their patients.
"The Nurses Board is looking at the rights of nurses, but the patients are part of this equation and where are their rights? Who is protecting them?" she said.
Health Services Commissioner Beth Wilson said she had not urged an investigation because the new disclosure requirements may lead to better processes. "When you get a whole lot of disclosures all at once like this you can't possibly investigate them all, particularly when some of them go back to the 1980s . . . What is more important is the nurse's record. Have they been a good nurse and are they well supervised?
"It might be that sometimes people who make mistakes in their life could actually be better nurses."
Opposition health spokeswoman Helen Shardey demanded the board investigate the most serious offences
HOSPITAL MANAGEMENT AND STAFF PASS THE BUCK
Red News Readers,
What angers me most about stories like this is that all of this was avoidable, the concerns about standards of care in the health system and the political embarassment for the government. There have been huge changes in the way the health system is administered and staffed over the past 40 years. Not all change is good, or leads to good outcomes. There have been many, many conscientious health system staff who have spoken out over those 40 years about their concern at the pace of change, often it seemed change for change sake, and the lack of concern about the consequences for patient care. Many of those conscientious staff missed out on promotion, were demoted, or even worse pushed out of the workforce because their care and concern was not seen as a priority in the ongoing push for a rationalised budget efficient system. Health care is about more than the provision of minimum cost care, there has to be room for patient or client centred care.
It is true that since Campbelltown Camden there is a far more effective quality system in parts of the health system and a greater willingness by some to be reflective about clinical practice but clinicians must be supported in their concerns about standards of care by administators, not subject to constant demands for tight budgets that compromise patient care.
Jenny Haines
Hospital management and staff pass the buck
Louise Hall, Health Reporter, smh
January 25, 2009
A FOUR-YEAR study of NSW hospitals has revealed staff and senior health bureaucrats blame each other for shocking errors, including deaths of patients.
The statewide "safety check" found patients were at significant risk of death or injury from falls, medication errors, staffing levels, lax infection control and mistakes in diagnosis and treatment.
Doctors and nurses overwhelmingly agreed that chronic understaffing and heavy reliance on inexperienced junior staff was a major risk - especially after-hours and in complex areas such as emergency and intensive care. But the area health service managers blamed adverse incidents on mistakes made by medical and nursing staff rather than problems with skill mix.
Opposition Health spokeswoman Jillian Skinner said it was "scandalous" that it has been five years since the Walker inquiry into 21 deaths at Campbelltown and Camden hospitals recommended an urgent audit of risks in the health system. Since then internal reports into 85 deaths over two years at western Sydney hospitals revealed that at least 49 of the patients did not receive adequate care.
Most of the avoidable deaths were due to a delay in responding to a rapidly deteriorating patient, the Annual Review of Root Cause Analysis 2006 and 2007 found.
But the chief executive of the $55 million Clinical Excellence Commission, Professor Clifford Hughes, defended the Quality Systems Assessment report released today, saying a great deal of developmental work had been done to get an accurate picture of the state's complex health system.
Professor Hughes said allowing everyone from the ward staff to hospital managers to top-level administrators to nominate their three highest risks to patient safety showed there was a significant disparity between the issues front-line staff saw as important, and the priorities of management.
The report found dozens of patient safety programs had been implemented since 2004 but very few had been reviewed to assess if they actually worked. Four of the eight area health services, and the Children's Hospital at Westmead, did not have any systems or processes for reviewing deaths. It also found confusion and lack of clear policy in many areas.
The director of the Institute of Health Innovation at the University of NSW, Jeffrey Braithwaite, commended the report but said collecting information was just the first step. "On too many initiatives in NSW we've seen things chopping and changing."
Health Minister John Della Bosca said 89 per cent of respondents felt there had been an improvement in patient safety and quality culture in the past two years. "This rigorous program is a world first for the assessment of quality and safety processes in a health system that will help us achieve ongoing improvements."
THE MAJOR RISKS
- Falls
- Medication errors
- Understaffing
- Inappropriate skill mix
- Mistakes in diagnosis
- Failure to recognise a patient rapidly deteriorating
- Infection control
- Inconsistent practices on death review, internal auditing, safety alerts
- Wrong patient or wrong body parts being operated on
What angers me most about stories like this is that all of this was avoidable, the concerns about standards of care in the health system and the political embarassment for the government. There have been huge changes in the way the health system is administered and staffed over the past 40 years. Not all change is good, or leads to good outcomes. There have been many, many conscientious health system staff who have spoken out over those 40 years about their concern at the pace of change, often it seemed change for change sake, and the lack of concern about the consequences for patient care. Many of those conscientious staff missed out on promotion, were demoted, or even worse pushed out of the workforce because their care and concern was not seen as a priority in the ongoing push for a rationalised budget efficient system. Health care is about more than the provision of minimum cost care, there has to be room for patient or client centred care.
It is true that since Campbelltown Camden there is a far more effective quality system in parts of the health system and a greater willingness by some to be reflective about clinical practice but clinicians must be supported in their concerns about standards of care by administators, not subject to constant demands for tight budgets that compromise patient care.
Jenny Haines
Hospital management and staff pass the buck
Louise Hall, Health Reporter, smh
January 25, 2009
A FOUR-YEAR study of NSW hospitals has revealed staff and senior health bureaucrats blame each other for shocking errors, including deaths of patients.
The statewide "safety check" found patients were at significant risk of death or injury from falls, medication errors, staffing levels, lax infection control and mistakes in diagnosis and treatment.
Doctors and nurses overwhelmingly agreed that chronic understaffing and heavy reliance on inexperienced junior staff was a major risk - especially after-hours and in complex areas such as emergency and intensive care. But the area health service managers blamed adverse incidents on mistakes made by medical and nursing staff rather than problems with skill mix.
Opposition Health spokeswoman Jillian Skinner said it was "scandalous" that it has been five years since the Walker inquiry into 21 deaths at Campbelltown and Camden hospitals recommended an urgent audit of risks in the health system. Since then internal reports into 85 deaths over two years at western Sydney hospitals revealed that at least 49 of the patients did not receive adequate care.
Most of the avoidable deaths were due to a delay in responding to a rapidly deteriorating patient, the Annual Review of Root Cause Analysis 2006 and 2007 found.
But the chief executive of the $55 million Clinical Excellence Commission, Professor Clifford Hughes, defended the Quality Systems Assessment report released today, saying a great deal of developmental work had been done to get an accurate picture of the state's complex health system.
Professor Hughes said allowing everyone from the ward staff to hospital managers to top-level administrators to nominate their three highest risks to patient safety showed there was a significant disparity between the issues front-line staff saw as important, and the priorities of management.
The report found dozens of patient safety programs had been implemented since 2004 but very few had been reviewed to assess if they actually worked. Four of the eight area health services, and the Children's Hospital at Westmead, did not have any systems or processes for reviewing deaths. It also found confusion and lack of clear policy in many areas.
The director of the Institute of Health Innovation at the University of NSW, Jeffrey Braithwaite, commended the report but said collecting information was just the first step. "On too many initiatives in NSW we've seen things chopping and changing."
Health Minister John Della Bosca said 89 per cent of respondents felt there had been an improvement in patient safety and quality culture in the past two years. "This rigorous program is a world first for the assessment of quality and safety processes in a health system that will help us achieve ongoing improvements."
THE MAJOR RISKS
- Falls
- Medication errors
- Understaffing
- Inappropriate skill mix
- Mistakes in diagnosis
- Failure to recognise a patient rapidly deteriorating
- Infection control
- Inconsistent practices on death review, internal auditing, safety alerts
- Wrong patient or wrong body parts being operated on
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