Orthopaedic surgeons resign from Canberra Hospital citing concerns over operational decisions

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Several orthopaedic surgeons have resigned from the ACT’s public health service in protest over what they've described as a 'deteriorating' environment where administrative priorities have trumped clinical decisions about patient care.

Transcript

00:00With a career in orthopaedics spent in Canberra, Dr Cindy Vrancic says recent decisions by

00:08health service officials had her calling time on practising in the public system.

00:14We've had a certain shift in the focus of the way that service is being delivered and

00:18it seems to coincide directly with the budgetary constraints and the overspending with the

00:22health system.

00:23She's not alone, the soon to be former head of the Canberra hospitals orthopaedics department

00:29has also thrown in the towel.

00:31The bureaucracy has finally just essentially pissed me off enough to, after 27 years, tell

00:39them where they can go jump.

00:40According to last month's Canberra Health Service's inpatient waiting list report, just

00:457% of category 1 patients who were ready for care were overdue for orthopaedic surgery

00:51within the 30 day guideline, but for category 2, 64% of patients hadn't been seen within

00:58the recommended 90 days, and for category 3, who guidelines say should be treated within

01:03a year, 28% hadn't had their surgery.

01:07Last month, a group of surgeons wrote to the health minister expressing a vote of no confidence

01:12in the administration of the health system.

01:14Canberra Health Services set up an operations centre to streamline patient flow through

01:19the hospitals.

01:20It was designed to tackle waiting list challenges, but the resigning surgeons say it hasn't worked.

01:26If there's a conflict between, say, a long wait elective patient who's been waiting to

01:31have, let's say, their hip replacement, and there's a trauma patient who also needs a

01:35similar surgery but there's only one set of equipment, as the clinician on site we want

01:40to choose the trauma patient, but we get overridden by the operations centre that say, no, no,

01:46you must not cancel any elective cases.

01:49The way you don't have a waiting list is you actually fund the surgeries.

01:53The operations centre is run by clinicians.

01:56It's run by doctors and very senior nurses who have years and years of experience in

02:01Canberra Hospital and in the ACT public health system.

02:04The minister argues the surgeons don't always have visibility of the bigger picture that

02:09informs decisions, but a new escalation process is being considered.

02:14There are trusted senior clinicians that they can go to to say, hang on a minute, I think

02:18the wrong decision's been taken, can we just have another look at this?

02:21Without meaningful change, the resigning doctors say their colleagues might not stick

02:25around to argue the point.

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