The entire Djerriwarrh Health Services board has been sacked for presiding over the stillborn baby scandal at Victoria’s Bacchus Marsh and Melton Regional Hospital.
Health Minister Jill Hennessy said she met the board members yesterday, but nothing could persuade her to keep them on.
“This is one of the greatest clinical governance failures that we’ve seen in the Victorian health system,” she said.
“It’s incumbent upon me and the Government to put in place a safe service and I had no basis or confidence that we could do that if the board continued.”
The review by Professor Euan Wallace found the hospital’s peri-natal mortality rate was significantly higher than the state average and much higher than expected for a “low risk” unit.
The deaths have been blamed on a series of catastrophic clinical and governance failures, rather than the hospital’s former director of obstetrics Dr Surinder Pahar.
He had conditions placed on his registration in June following a 28-month investigation by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency, but retired a month later and has been struck off the register.
Ms Hennessy said senior doctors could be held legally accountable for their failures.
“I would like to see accountability for those who have contributed to some of the most devastating outcomes for families,” she said.
“How that accountability is effected is yet to play out.”
Former Mercy Health chief executive Dr John Ballard will act as the Bacchus Marsh hospital’s administrator for a year.
He said his role was to support the hospital’s new chief executive in improving clinical governance and quality of care, and restoring public confidence in the health service.
“It’s understandable that people have diminished confidence, but every day babies are being born at Djerriwarrh,” Dr Ballard said.
“Some women have cancelled, but the majority of bookings remain stable.”
Ms Hennessy said there were no financial consequences for the Government for dismissing the board.