Australia’s health regulator says it is investigating numerous practitioners working at Melbourne’s Bacchus Marsh hospital over a cluster of avoidable baby deaths.
The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Ahpra) is reviewing “thousands of pages of clinical records” to contribute to a Department of Health and Human Services investigation into stillbirths and newborn deaths in 2013 and 2014.
The agency would not confirm the number of practitioners being investigated.
“By law, we can’t publicly identify individuals who are under investigation and talking publicly about numbers and professions in a small health service would necessarily identify individuals,” Ahpra chief executive Martin Fletcher said in a statement on Tuesday.
“Also, the numbers change as we learn more about what happened, identify who was involved and assess whether they did what they ought to have done. New cases open, other matters close.”
Fletcher said Ahpra “owed it to the families who have suffered terrible loss” to carry out a thorough and fair investigation.
Ahpra also released the results of an independent audit of its handling of notifications.
A KPMG audit was prompted after it took Ahpra more than two years to investigate a complaint about a doctor at Bacchus Marsh.
The review found Ahpra needed to improve its risk assessment, management of high-risk complaints, public transparency, perceptions of being pro-practitioner, and the time it took to investigate matters.
Initial risk assessments of complaints will now be done by senior Ahpra staff, direct phone contact will be made with those who lodge complaints and a notifications liaison officer has been created in response to the audit.
The hospital’s board was sacked last year over the deaths and replaced with an administrator.
Obstetrics expert Euan Wallace last year led a review into the deaths of 10 babies at Djerriwarrh Health Services in Bacchus Marsh between 2013 and 2014, and found seven could have been avoided.
Victoria’s health minister, Jill Hennessy, then asked Wallace to look at baby deaths and other serious cases at Djerriwarrh from before 2013.