Page 3023 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 15 August 2018
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is the reinvention of history when something that happened six months ago is historical. It is still happening. It is still happening at the moment. Some of the people who are outlined in this report as having bad relationships are still there.
It is not sufficient to say that this was all about the two directors of training. It is clearly not just about the two directors of training. I will quote from the summary of the preliminary report as reported:
The assessors found the most significant issue—
facing the Canberra Hospital—
was the negative environment within the department.
It referred in particular to the poor relationships between the directors of training—yes—the head of the department, the medical director, the director of medical imaging and the hospital executive. There is more to this than just blaming two people who do not have their jobs anymore. There is more to this than that. It goes on to say:
… internal political issues make working in the department difficult and cause low morale amongst staff … These issues are having a significant impact on the wellbeing of the trainees.
This was a report into the capacity to conduct training.
The Canberra Hospital is not part of a network. This was the only issue that was raised by the director of medicine in the estimates report: “Canberra Hospital is not part of a trainee network and trainees do not rotate to any private or rural sites. There have been attempts in the past to develop links with other sites; however, these have been unsuccessful.” It goes on to say, and this is absolutely gobsmacking when you think about it: “Recently BreastScreen ACT applied for accreditation to enable Canberra Hospital trainees to gain exposure to mammography; however, the application was withdrawn.”
So medical imaging at the Canberra Hospital does not even talk to BreastScreen ACT. How important would that be, to have people who are trained in the ACT reading the films of the women who go to BreastScreen ACT? From time to time in the past, we have imported people from interstate to do that because we did not have sufficient trained people to do it here.
This is not historical; this is today. There are people who have current, live public interest disclosures that are not being dealt with. This is today. It is interesting that the minister coughed up the information—an issue which I have never raised—that all the equipment now meets Medicare requirements. That begs the question: how long was equipment in medical imaging not meeting Medicare requirements? Was there equipment that was not sufficiently maintained to ensure that they could bulk-bill against a Medicare item number? There are rules about this, Madam Speaker.
The minister coughed up the information: “Well, there’s nothing to see here at the moment.” What was the situation like? Has ACT Health been involved in Medicare
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