By Andrew O’Connor
The privatisation of non-medical services at Perth’s Fiona Stanley Hospital is working well, a Parliamentary committee investigating serious problems at the hospital has been told.
The $4.3 billion contract with Serco covers a range of services, several of which have encountered problems since the hospital opened earlier this year.
The Government stripped Serco of its sterilisation responsibilities in April after complaints about supposedly sterilised medical equipment being contaminated with human body tissue.
Serco was also forced to employ more porters after problems emerged surrounding limitations on porters physically touching patients.
Health Minister Kim Hames defended the decision to privatise non-clinical services at the hospital when he appeared before the committee flanked by Health Department director general David Russell-Weisz and senior health executives.
“From our point of view, the contract is working exceptionally well with a whole range of services being provided by Serco,” he said.
Committee chair and Liberal MP Graham Jacobs quoted from a specially-commissioned review of clinical services released in June, which characterised the Serco contract as “challenging” and questioned whether it was cost-effective.
“The contract with Serco has proved challenging at a number of levels,” Dr Jacobs said, reading from the report.
“Many of the potential money-saving initiatives envisaged by employing a facilities manager are yet to achieve savings.”
Dr Hames acknowledged there had been significant problems.
“Certainly there are aspects of the employment of Serco that have proved challenging, particularly the sterilisation component and to a lesser extent the portering component,” he said.
Dr Hames was asked by the committee if, in hindsight, he would have changed the Serco contract by excluding certain services.
“Would I have changed sterilisation and put us in charge?” he said.
“Probably not, because Serco should have been able to do the sterilisation. As it turned out they didn’t, and we had to take it off them.”
Dr Hames said under the contract, porters were “mildly constrained” in what they could do to assist with moving patients, and were unable to turn them or move their limbs.
“I think I would have done better work to make it clearer and perhaps have [given] their role a bit more responsibility, perhaps in simple things like turning patients,” he said.
Privatisation cost savings ‘to be me made clear down track’
Dr Russell-Weisz said the review’s conclusions about the cost savings of privatisation were premature.
“It will be a matter of time, after probably the first year of full operations at the hospital, when things really settle down, when we will be able to tell in better detail about how certain services are working,” he said.
Speaking after the hearing, Dr Hames said he was not concerned that it would take until February next year to determine if the $4.3 billion contract was delivering expected savings and value for money.
“We know what we’re paying Serco and we’re paying them according to the contract,” he said.
The original comparison with the public sector showed a clear benefit to the Government, he said.
“Now we’re not paying anything more so the original public sector comparator would be the same except we’ve taken away sterilisation and mildly modified other things,” he said.
Dr Hames was also questioned about how the lessons learned from the commissioning of Fiona Stanley Hospital would be used to avoid similar problems at the new Perth Children’s Hospital.
Construction of the children’s hospital had been scheduled to finish next month, but has now been delayed.
Dr Hames said a firm five-month commissioning window would apply from the time the building was completed.
He said after the ICT issues at Fiona Stanley, he would be monitoring the commissioning process closely.
“It’s always hard to predict those things,” he said.
“I am given great assurance that those things now are much better coordinated, much better planned, and won’t be an issue.
“I’ll wait to see the end result before I make any more specific comments.”
No revised date has been set for the opening of the children’s hospital.