THE Victorian ombudsman says she wasn’t able to properly investigate allegations of excessive force at a psychiatric centre because of poor record keeping and a refusal by the centre to give her access to files.
OMBUDSMAN Deborah Glass says her investigation was hindered by the lack of detail recorded by the unnamed facility.
Ms Glass was investigating concerns raised by authorised volunteer inspectors, who reported a number of incidents, including the use of excessive force. She says the mistreatment allegations were made by five patients and included claims of being dragged by the hair, sustaining shoulder injuries, bruising and grazing to the forehead and legs. She says only one of the five claims was the subject of an incident report. Ms Glass says the facility either refused or delayed access to incident reports where they existed, because they were not part of the patient’s medical files and the facility was not required to provide them. The facility was also concerned that full disclosure would breach staff confidentiality when staff may have been cleared subsequently. But Ms Glass said that approach was narrow and overly legalistic. “This undesirable outcome leaves the matter unresolved for all parties,” she said in her report, tabled in parliament on Wednesday. Ms Glass said the facility had since taken steps to fix the issue, including the introduction of a policy on incident reporting and improved training on restraint and non-restraint methods. She said the Department of Health had accepted her recommendation to direct facilities to hand over incident reports to authorised, voluntary inspectors where necessary. The ombudsman said there were also 20 complaints about treatment plans being provided either late or not at all but she said the facility had fixed that.