DUBBO AND COBAR, WESTERN NSW — These are our hospitals “at work”. These are how “our hospitals work”.

This is what are supposed to be  H O S P I T A L S :   They can’t even keep a supply of fresh blood.  Clueless.  Stupidity runs the local health districts.  People employed beyond their capability and this is the result.  Are they still being paid to serve this substandard care up?

Western New South Wales Local Health District CEO Scott McLachlan – patients don’t want your apology.  It’s too late.  You do not listen.  People want properly functioning and well equipped hospitals.  Apart from churning out empty promises, what do you actually do, Scott?  Not much judging by yesterday’s evidence at the Rural Regional Remote Health Inquiry.

Read more of the ABC Western Plains report:

Only nine of 38 hospitals i the western region carry blood, NSW inquiry told

NEW SOUTH WALES — The NSW Parliament Legislative Council (Upper House) is conducting an inquiry into rural health failures and disasters in New South Wales.  It requires a judicial inquiry not a parliamentary one.

It was launched last August 2020.  Submissions deadline 11/12/20 then extended to 15/1/21.

703 submissions numbers have been allocated on the parliamentary website.  How many more submissions were received beyond 703 is unknown.

Before the inquiry hearings started today, the 703 submissions to the inquiry have been censored, redacted senseless, chunks removed, and retyped without consent of authors.

Anything that supposedly offends the committee has been obliterated.  Truth usually does offend because politicians don’t want to face it.

Does this committee of inquiry want to hear what is going on in rural health?

It’s frightened of the truth before it has started.

JORDAN, MIDDLE EAST — At least seven people died at a hospital in Jordan on Saturday 13 March 2021 after it ran out of oxygen, according to Jordanian news reports, prompting an outcry in the kingdom, a visit to the hospital by King Abdullah II and the resignations of the country’s health minister and the hospital’s director.

Officials said that all of the victims were being treated for the coronavirus and that they had died after an interruption of oxygen supply that lasted around an hour at a government hospital in Salt, northwest of Amman, the capital.

Many countries across the world, including Mexico, Nigeria and Egypt, have faced oxygen supply shortages that have driven up the virus death toll. In Mexico, prices for oxygen have spiked, sales of oxygen tanks have thrived on the black market, and criminal groups have stolen them from hospitals. In Egypt, a New York Times investigation found that at least three patients had died of oxygen deprivation in a hospital that was running out of it earlier this year.

READ MORE OF ELIAN PELTIER’S STORY IN THE NEW YORK TIMES:

At least 7 Covid-19 patients die in Jordan because of an oxygen shortage, a growing problem around the world.

CANBERRA — The Final Report into Aged Care Quality and Safety, released Monday 1st March 2021, has confirmed MEAG’s concerns raised in repeated correspondence to the respective federal ministers for some two decades.

MEAG is not shocked by the Royal Commission’s findings.  It is what it has reported and named the atrocious nursing homes.  As for the Aged Care so-called regulator, we could only laugh at their ineptitude.

The federal ministers for aged care ignored MEAG.  This is the proof they did not read a single letter from concerned constituents Australia-wide either.  Each and every minister ignored everything and everyone.  Now they’re supposedly surprised — not shamed — just surprised.  The Royal Commission was an excuse for the federal government to stall even further.  Always “looking into things” but always the other way.

Australia’s maltreatment of its elderly is shameful and a disgrace.

To every politician:  Hang your head in shame.  To the Ministers for Aged Care, you all need to quit.  To you the elderly are a nuisance.  Wait till it’s your mum and dad and see how you fare.  Good luck.

SYDNEY — The Prince of Wales Hospital, Randwick, comes to public attention again.

Medical Error Action Group founder Lorraine Long said “People think you’re safe in hospital but this case shows you’re not.

READ more of today’s Sydney Telegraph:

Death bungle:  Nurses face tribunal after patient suffocates

SYDNEY — Now we have Deputy Premier The Hon John Barilaro, state MP for Monaro, for calling for a probe into ‘horrific’ hospital allegations.

They are not “allegations” Mr Barilaro.  They are fact.  Read your correspondence, deputy premier.  It’s called due diligence.  Talk about ducking and weaving.

Mr Barilaro, to illustrate being out of touch, claims they ‘warrant an immediate investigation by the NSW Health Department and not could not wait for an upcoming parliamentary inquiry’.

Excuse me Deputy Premier Barilaro — it’s the NSW Ministry of Health (aka NSW Health Department) which is covering up malpractice, horror patient deaths, adverse medical patient events, bunglings et al.  They know of every incident.  Anything to save their malfeasant Local Health Districts (LHDs) and their own necks.  And you want them to probe?

This is the task for the NSW Police Force.

READ MORE of Carrie Fellner’s story in The Sydney Morning Herald:

Barilaro calls for urgent investigation into ‘horrific’ hospital allegations

SYDNEY — For 25 years MEAG has reported untold hospital patient deaths were covered up by respective government health departments.

Do these health departments think we’re stupid?  Covering up death is a crime.

“Reporting” deaths to the NSW Ministry of Health is absurd – they bury the reports.  Patients go to their grave unaccounted for.

BRING IN NSW POLICE FORCE.  Deaths are reported to the Coroner.

MEAG knows what is going on and it is ugly, shameful and abhorrent that people in power allow this to happen and continue.

Doctors today have now confirmed MEAG’s claims that hospital patients deaths are deliberately and intentionally covered-up by the NSW Ministry of Health.

The Ministry’s idea of “handling” patient deaths is to have the Clinical Excellence Commission report that a few incidents here and there occurred and everything is rosy.  The Ministry is clueless.  Spin doctors run it.

Time for Health Minister Brad Hazzard to go.  Think cruise liner “Ruby Princess” debacle – cluelessness on full display.  Coronavirus arrived and the minister was scared.

The failings in rural health didn’t just happen last week.  For 10 years this Government has been in power and allowed rural health to rot and patient deaths to be smothered.  As long as it wasn’t happening to their relatives.

Out of touch, out of sight, out of mind, that is how the NSW Ministry of Health operates.

The public already knows they are not up to the task and why MEAG has done their work for them because they are incapable of doing it themselves.

The NSW Ministry of Health is a cabal and woe betide anyone who encounters it.  They’ll keep their jobs and you’ll lose yours if you speak up.  Sounds like we’re in China.

Crime can be covered up for only so long.  The truth always rises to the surface.

READ MORE of Carrie Fellner’s story in today’s The Sydney Morning Herald:

‘Keep the ministry unaware’: doctors allege cover up of hospital patient deaths

SYDNEY — This quote in today’s The Sydney Morning Herald illustrates that the New South Wales Ministry of Health is clueless.  There should be no need for any inquiry if they had just listened (they don’t know how) and took note of the thousands of letters they receive every day about problems and fixed them.      Read this:

NSW Health acknowledged the concerns and said it welcomed the opportunity to participate in the inquiry.

“Of all those patients who pass through our public hospitals, 99.999 per cent will have a positive outcome,” a spokesperson said.

“Just 0.001 per cent of all patients discharged from hospital will be involved in a clinical incident which results in serious patient harm, known as a sentinel event.”

“Welcomed the opportunity”?  “Participate”?  NSW Ministry of Health should be driving this, not welcoming it.  Sounds like they are a side participant looking in. They are the government department of health and supposedly in charge.  Their incompetence reigns … the dumbest response from a government health department.  And they can’t work out why the rural hospital system is a mess because they don’t know what to do.

As for the 0.001%?  That is a fabricated percentage.  All lies.  All spin concocted by people who have not got a clue but got to protect their unaccountable ministry.  Patients being discharged via the morgue instead of the front door adds up to more than 0.001%.

Read the full horror (no surprise to MEAG) of Carrie Fellner’s in The Sydney Morning Herald:

BYO bandages: inquiry told of ‘horrendous’ state of NSW hospitals

BUNBURY, WESTERN AUSTRALIA — A mother has described the heartbreaking moment she woke from a coma to discover her baby boy had died at birth after she was given 10 times the prescribed dose of morphine at the private St John of God Hospital in the West Australian town of Bunbury, south of Perth.

The mother was given 100 milligrams of the drug during labour instead of 10 milligrams to ease the pain, at St John of God Hospital on December 10, 2020.

“It was devastating. It just broke my whole life,” the mother said.

St John of God Health Care has already concluded: “On the available information at this time, it appears that the incident was caused by human error”.

A midwife has been stood down and her registration suspended by AHPRA.  Another staff member has resigned.

READ FULL STORY FROM THE WEST AUSTRALIAN BETHANY HIATT:

Bunbury hospital’s morphine bungle leaves baby Zyeen dead, other Mansurin Sarah Hassan in coma

AND FROM ABC NEWS NICOLAS PERPITCH:

WA mother wakes from coma to find baby was stillborn after hospital in Bunbury gave her 10 times prescribed morphine dose

BOWRAL, SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS, NSW — Another misdiagnosis upon presentation to Bowral and District Hospital‘s emergency department.

This is the 5th case of patients’ families not being listened to and sending the patient home for them to present again and again.  Bowral and District Hospital refused to transfer patients to any major Sydney hospitals.  Families had to organise it themselves.  Two of the patients died shortly after admission to different Sydney hospitals.

The hospital needs to conduct root cause analysis and see what’s going on.  Is it capable of doing so?

Better trained doctors in the ED are required for a start.

Warning to patients:  Steer clear of Bowral.  Drive to Sydney if you have to.