A former chairman of the regional hospital board that oversaw a series of stillborn baby deaths has slammed the Victorian Government’s handling of the scandal.
Health Minister Jill Hennessy formally dissolved the board of the Djerriwarrh Health Service this week after an investigation found seven baby deaths at the Bacchus Marsh and Melton Regional Hospital in 2013 and 2014 were potentially avoidable.
Michael Tudball was chairman of the hospital’s board between 2010 and 2013 during his 14-year stint as a member, which ended in June when he resigned.
Mr Tudball said the board had been hung out to dry for failures it could not be held solely accountable for.
“We’re not an island, as far as this is concerned, and we’re part of a health system, and if people are going to have confidence in the health system and the health service, we need to reassure them,” he said.
“And the headline that says the board’s been sacked doesn’t give me any more confidence in the health service, or the health system, I’d want to know a bit more about it.
“If you’ve got to sack the board to do that, that’s fine, I’m just saying, from what I’ve seen from the outside, sacking the board in isolation doesn’t do that.
“You still haven’t addressed the root cause of the problem, in my view, unless something else has occurred.”
The head obstetrician at the hospital has since resigned from his position and other doctors who worked at the service are being investigated by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency.
Mr Tudball said the Health Department also needed to address core resourcing problems at the hospital, with the board’s dismissal unlikely to resolve any major issues that led to the scandal.
“We’ve outgrown our capacity,” he said.
“This is a place that started off when I started doing less than 200 births a year, and when I finished we’re doing 1,100.”
Former board members ‘not contacted’ for baby deaths review
The State Government appointed Professor Euan Wallace to review the stillborn and newborn deaths at the hospital after the Department of Health was advised of the higher than expected number.
Mr Tudball said he was surprised he had not been approached to contribute to the review.
“If there were failures in our governance, I would have thought someone would have looked at the accountability of the board and what we did in response to certain things,” he said.
“And I would have thought being there, particularly for two of the three years that have been highlighted in the media, as the president someone would have spoken to me and said ‘what role did you play in this Michael? What were you told by management? What were you told by doctors? What were you told by whoever, and what did you do about it?”
“No-one’s spoken to me.”
Ms Hennessy has appointed Dr John Ballard, the former chief executive of Mercy Health, as an administrator at Djerriwarrh Health Services.
In a statement, a spokeswoman for Ms Hennessy acknowledged it was a number of key failings, including a lack of clinical oversight and ineffective governance structures, that may have led to the deaths.
But she said a new era of leadership was vital to restore the community’s faith in the hospital.
“Health service boards play a vital role in ensuring hospitals operate effectively, safely and efficiently,” she said.
“It is vital that there is fresh leadership at Djerriwarrh Health Services so it can rebuild trust in the community and continue to provide the very important health services it does to local residents, including maternity care.”
Former chairman never noticed unusual number of deaths
Mr Tudball said he was never aware there was a problem in relation to the number of perinatal deaths.
“You get them reported up through the risk committee [but] you see them one case at a time,” he said.
“You get a report from the medicos to say ‘this was reviewed and unfortunately it was unavoidable’. That’s it, case closed from our perspective.”
He said he was happy to be held accountable for failing to recognise the high number.
“One of the failings might be that we never seen (sic) the trend of it going up, but when you see them in isolation you actually can’t pick up any trend,” he said.
“I’m happy to be hung out to dry for failings in governance, but I won’t take responsibility for deaths.”