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Who is really looking after Queenslanders’ health?

Isn’t it interesting, and distressing, to hear that another inquiry into botched surgery at a major Queensland public hospital has been launched only after a public outcry?

This time it’s Mackay Base Hospital in the firing line, and the announcement comes little more than a month after patients and insider whistle-blowers opened up on Caboolture Hospital’s appalling record.

As with the Caboolture protest we reported last month, it’s only the bravery of people coming forward with their own first-hand experiences which has forced the Queensland government and the hospital shiny bums to admit, eventually, that there are serious shortcomings in their oversight and management of the hospital system.

Did the administrators of these hospitals – and the Health Minister herself – really have no idea what was happening until patients and relatives pleaded in the media for action? Where is the openness and transparency regarding patient care that Queensland Health and the administrators of these hospitals assure us they “take very seriously” whenever they’re taken to task? Why did we only hear about these failures when they couldn’t be covered up any longer? And is it too much to hope that these are isolated cases? Do we have to wait for further individual revelations before the Minister and hospital administrators throughout Queensland face up to the need for an urgent and thorough investigation into the standards of competency in major areas of surgery at all our hospitals?

Until the failures at Caboolture and Mackay became public it seems patients and their families were being ignored or not taken seriously when they complained. It’s encouraging to see at last that under pressure from the community, media and opposition leaders, Queensland Health and the hospitals for which it is ultimately responsible may at last start to take some strong and urgent remedial action rather than repeat their usual platitudes and promises.


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