Page 4211 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 23 October 1991
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Mr Harris has said that at no time did he ever describe or mention a headache or ask for a doctor; he requested an ambulance. His fiancee, Ms Clemens, was taken to Royal Canberra Hospital South the next morning, assessed in accident and emergency and later transferred by ambulance to Royal Canberra Hospital North. Ms Clemens was diagnosed as having an aneurism, which I understand to be a burst blood vessel, in the head and was operated on to locate and alleviate the problem. I understand the condition to be extremely serious and potentially life threatening.
Mr Harris was so disturbed by the response he obtained to his call for help that he sent a letter of complaint by fax to the director of the Ambulance Service and sent copies to members of the Assembly and to the Canberra Times. I followed up Mr Harris' letter with a call for an inquiry into the matter. I believe that the Minister for Health, Mr Berry, did announce that day that an internal inquiry would proceed. I later asked Mr Berry to make the report available. This request was refused on the grounds that the name of the officer involved in the incident appeared on the report. Quite frankly, Mr Deputy Speaker, I believe that this was a cop-out, because nothing would have been easier for Mr Berry than to ask to have the officer's name deleted from the report.
On 3 September I wrote to Mr Berry on the matter and asked that Mr Berry release the report, with the name of the officer involved deleted. Fearing that there was some kind of cover-up going on, I also launched a request for all documents relating to this matter under the freedom of information legislation. This request was ultimately successful, and I have since obtained the documents relating to the incident and copies of the two reports of the inquiry conducted into the incident. The name of the officer involved has been deleted from the documents provided to me. I have now had the chance to study the documents in some depth, and I have come to the conclusion that there remain a lot of unanswered questions surrounding this case.
The inquiry report reveals that the officer involved did not follow normal procedures in relation to Mr Harris' request for an ambulance and that an ambulance should have been dispatched. The inquiry was conducted by Mr Peter Macdonald, a senior officer in the Board of Health not involved in the ACT Ambulance Service. His report, produced in two parts that I will table, states:
When a call is received at present it is up to the controller to decide whether or not to send an ambulance, however the universal protocol is that when assistance is requested, then a vehicle is despatched. In the ACT and other states this is recorded in the vehicle running logs, either a manual system or a Computer Aided Despatch system.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .